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COPYRIGHT DEPOSfR 



THE HOME-MAKING SERIES 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



AN ELEMENTARY TEXTBOOK OF HOME MAKING 



BY 



HELEN KINNE 

PROFESSOR OF HOUSEHOLD ARTS EDUCATION, TEACHERS COLLEGE 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, AUTHOR OF " FOOD AND HOUSEHOLD 

MANAGEMENT " AND " SHELTER AND CLOTHING " 

AND 

ANNA M. COOLEY, B.S. 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HOUSEHOLD ARTS EDUCATION, TEACHERS COLLEGE 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, AUTHOR OF " FOOD AND HOUSEHOLD 

MANAGEMENT" AND "SHELTER AND CLOTHING" 



Wefo gorfc 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1916 

uill rights reserved 






Copyright, 1916, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1916. 






JUL 27 1916 



Nortoooti $reB8 

J. S. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©CI.A433864 



PREFACE 

This volume, like its companion, Clothing and Health, is 
intended for use in the elementary schools in those sections 
of the country where the home life is of the type described. 
It is hoped that both volumes will be used by the home 
people as well as by the school children. This volume 
treats largely of food -problems, including something of 
raising food and of selling it, in addition to the preparation 
of food at school and at home. Such topics as the water 
supply, disposal of waste, and other sanitary matters are 
woven in with the lessons on nutrition and cookery. There 
are a number of simple recipes, all of which have been 
carefully tested, and some of which have been taken from 
Foods and Household Management, Kinne-Cooley. The 
authors again acknowledge their indebtedness to Mrs. Lin- 
coln, Miss Farmer, and Miss Barrows. Several recipes 
are adapted from Just How, a key to the cook books, by 
Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney ; and others are original and have 
been contributed by other friends. A number are borrowed 
from Home Economics Recipes by Miss Mary Beals Vail, 
now of Mills College, California, formerly of Teachers 
College, Columbia University. Professor Van Arsdale, 
Miss Bertha E. Shapleigh, Miss Mary McCormick, Miss 
Mary E. Pillsbury, all of Teachers College, Columbia 
University, and several of their students kindly assisted 



iv PREFACE 

in arranging for photographs. Indeed, the authors are in- 
debted to the members of the staff of the School of Practical 
Arts for their friendliness and inspiration. 

The volume is greatly enriched by pictures and notes 
culled from the bulletins issued by the New York State 
College of Agriculture at Cornell University ; and the 
authors are glad to aid thus in extending beyond the 
boundaries of New York State the valuable work accom- 
plished by Miss Martha Van Rensselaer and other members 
of the University staff. 

The picture of the Pleasant Valley School is adapted 
from a photograph of a school in Mendocino Co., Cali- 
fornia, kindly furnished by Mrs. Anna Porterfield, County 
Superintendent. Several illustrations have been adapted 
from cuts in bulletins published by the Ohio State Uni- 
versity. 

The pamphlets published by the Government Bureaus 
at Washington, D.C., are, also, a source of interesting and 
accurate information for all the citizens of the country. 



CONTENTS 



The Pleasant Valley School 
Chapter I. Introductory 



Chapter II 




Lesson 


i. 


Lesson 


2. 


Lesson 


3- 


Lesson 


4- 


Lesson 


5- 


Lesson 


6. 


Lesson 


7- 


Lesson 


8. 


Chapter III. 


Lesson 


ci- 


Lesson 


io. 


Lesson 


11. 


Lesson 


12. 


Lesson 


13- 


Lesson 


14. 


Lesson 


IS- 


Lesson 


16. 


Chapter IV. 


Lesson 


17. 


Lesson 


18. 


Lesson 


19. 


Lesson 


20. 


Lesson 


21. 



Luncheon at School: 
Proper Foods for the School Luncheon 
Water and Fruit Beverages . 
Cocoa for the School Luncheon 
The Value of Milk as a Food 
Bread as a Staple Food 
Making Bread 
Other Dishes for the School Luncheon 
A Picnic Luncheon . 

The Home Supper: 

Preparing Supper 

Dishes Suitable for Supper . 

Other Supper Dishes . 

The Canning of Fruit and Vegetables 

The Value of Fruit in the Diet 

The Value of Potatoes as Food . 

Griddlecakes and Sweet Cake 

Clearing Up .... 



The Home Breakfast: 
Suitable Breakfast Dishes . 
Breakfast Cereals 
The Value of Eggs as Food 
Quick Breads 
The Kitchen 



9 

18 
26 

32 
40 
48 

55 
61 



69 

82 

87 
92 
108 
117 
126 
133 



146 
156 
166 

177 
186 



vi CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Chapter V. The Home Dinner: 

Lesson 22. Menus for Dinner 198 

Lesson 23. Meat as Food . 204 

Lesson 24. Fresh Vegetables 219 

Lesson 25. Dishes for Dessert ." . . . . . 234 

Lesson 26. Cooking Apparatus . . ... . . 246 

Lesson 27. The Care of Food : . . . . . . 256 

Chapter VI. Other Facts about Food: 

Lesson 28. A Study of 100-Calorie Portions . . . . . 268 

Lesson 29. Buying and Selling Food . . . . » '. 280 

The Ellen H. Richards House . . . . . . . 289 

Pages from Marjorie Allen's Notebook 292 



C-jb^K 



ww^ 




THE PLEASANT VALLEY SCHOOL 

This is a story of the way in which the mothers and 
fathers, the teacher and pupils, and their friends in the 
township work together to make the broad valley in 
which they live truly a Pleasant Valley. The new 
school stands where the little red schoolhouse was built 
for those who are now grandmothers and grandfathers, 
when the town was first settled. The old building had 
become too small for all the young folk, but everybody 
loved the place ; and it was not until a fire had de- 
stroyed it that money was voted for larger and better 
housing for the school girls and boys. 

This small book can describe only a part of every- 



2 FOOD AND HEALTH 

thing that is being done in and for the school, and for 
the home people, too ; for you know that no town can 
prosper and no country can be great unless the homes 
are healthful and happy, where all the members of every 
family work and play together. Do you not want to 
help, too, in your home and in your home town ? 




Little red schoolhouse. 




CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY 

What are some of the important facts about food and sanita- 
tion that a girl may learn, useful to herself and in her home ? 

When the cool weather of autumn comes again, 
Marjorie Allen and her friends are glad to have school 
days returning, too ; for then there are so many inter- 
esting things to talk over, to think about, and to do with 
the other pupils. There are the teacher to be wel- 
comed and the new schoolbooks with their new sub- 
jects to be studied. The girls in and about Pleasant 
Valley have a club for sociability and for work. This 
is the time of year for them to be making plans for the 
winter. What time, then, or what reason is there for 
studying such a commonplace matter as food ? 

" We all know enough about food," some school- 
girl is saying, " and mother does the cooking anyway ; 
so why bother about it in school ? " 

3 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



Marjorie Allen, however, is a wide-awake girl, who 
has read in the farm journal at home some interesting 
articles about food, and has noticed that the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture at Washington, D. C, and the 
University in her own state have printed bulletins for 

the farmer's wife about 
nutrition, cookery, and 
housekeeping. There 
are other pamphlets, too, 
for girls, explaining can- 
ning clubs, and bread and 
sewing contests. These 
pamphlets and books, 
also on the same subjects, 
have helped Marjorie to 
understand that there 
must be something to 
study ; else why are books 
written and printed ? 
Moreover, Marjorie is an 
unselfish girl, ready to 
help her Mother when 
she can ; and so she is 
glad to find among the new books for the year's study 
one or two about homemaking. 

What do we know about food ? We cannot answer 
the question at the beginning of this chapter in full, 
without studying and thinking and working. Perhaps 
not until we reach the end of the last chapter can 




Fig. i. — Marjorie Allen. 



. INTRODUCTORY 5 

we tell what are the important, useful facts about 
food. But it is true that each girl knows something 
about food, at least enough to be able to decide upon 
what she likes. Probably she has been told that some 
foods are more wholesome than others. Even the living 
creatures about us have some instinct that guides them 
to foods desirable for them. Have you ever seen a 
squirrel eating a toadstool that you would not dare to 
taste ? 

Why do we take food ? It is interesting to notice 
what the lower animals are eating ; for some kinds of 
food we share with them, and what food does for them 
it does for us. There are the calves, who live at first 
upon milk, like the baby at home. We can see how 
much they have all grown through the summer. The 
awkward, long-legged fowl running about with such 
energy are very different from the balls of yellow down 
that came from the shell in the spring. They have 
lived upon grain chiefly, but see what they have gained 
in weight ! One astonishing thing about the young wild 
birds is their rapid growth ; and, although angleworms 
would seem a disagreeable diet to you, the young 
robins like them as much as you do mutton chops or 
roast beef. 

Food for growth. One fact, then, about food ,is 
this : it gives us material for our bodies, for making 
bones, muscle, fat, blood, hair, and teeth. But more im- 
portant still is the fact that some foods build our bodies 
better than others. The picture (Fig. 2) shows that 



FOOD AND HEALTH 




there is a difference in the feeding of animals ; for these 
pigs are the same age, and belong to one family, but 

they have eaten different 
kinds of food. 

When the Pleasant 
Valley pupils looked at 
this picture, John Stark 
was eager to tell the story 
of a prize pig raised by 
his cousin in the next 

Courtesy of the United States Department of tOWfl. 1 U1S IS me StOry . 

Agriculture. 

Fig. 2. — Litter mates. Frank Ross, who belongs to 

a pig club, had a contest with 
his uncle. From the same litter they selected two pigs as nearly 
alike as possible. 

Frank followed the directions given by the U. S. Department 
of Agriculture, and his uncle treated the other pig as he had always 
done. This is what happened : 

Weight Cost of Food Selling Price 

Frank's pig . 520 lb. #15-54 $58.00 

Uncle's pig 65 lb. 5.00 8.00 

Think over what we have just said about the calf and 
the chicken, and you can name two kinds of food that 
are good body builders. There are no wild creatures 
near Pleasant Valley that live upon flesh, except the 
hawks among the birds ; but where foxes. are still found 
they thrive upon meat food, and, of course, the young 
lion of hot countries grows upon a flesh diet. 

Food for life and work. Food plays another part that we 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

can understand when we recall what happens to people 
who starve in times of famine or war. The body be- 
comes weak, unfit for work, and all movements finally 
stop. Sit perfectly still for a moment. Are all parts 
of your body quiet ? No ! Your eyelids are winking, 
you are breathing, your heart is beating ; and there 
are other movements which you cannot feel, such as 
the constant flow of the blood. Touch your own hand, 
— how warm it is ! Your clothing makes you warm 
only by keeping in the heat of your body. What, then, 
is the source of this heat ?' You can give the answer 
yourself, can you not ? It is your food that gives 
you body warmth and power to work. All the foods 
already mentioned give this energy. What facts about 
the baby and calf and young robin prove this ? The 
sugar and the fat in the milk are two substances that 
furnish the energy, and for this reason they are called 
fuel foods. Another substance found in milk and meat 
is both a body builder and a fuel food. This sub- 
stance you will study in Lesson 4. 

Water and mineral matter. Water is another im- 
portant part of our food and drink. Still there is 
something else, that we cannot see, which serves as food 
for the body. When wood is thoroughly burned, you 
know that it leaves ash. Food materials do the same 
thing when they are burned as completely. This white 
or gray ash does not burn because it is made up of min- 
eral substances, lime, iron, and many others. These 
are most important for our bodies. Both water and 



8 FOOD AND HEALTH 

the mineral substances help in body-building. We 
shall learn more about them later on. 

Other interesting facts about food. You can make 
your own list ; for surely facts about preparing food so 
that it is delicious to eat, facts about serving it daintily, 
and knowledge of how to keep it clean, even of how to 
raise and sell it, and of how to buy it, will occur to you 
as worth knowing. One small book cannot contain 
all this information, but at least this book may help 
you to make a beginning. 

The year's work. The heading of this chapter states 
our large problem for study during the year. 

The projects, or pieces of practical work, for us are 
the school luncheon, the home supper, breakfast, and 
dinner. As we study each meal in the different 
chapters, we shall learn about the food materials and 
the dishes prepared from them suitable for each meal. 
Some of these dishes can be made at school, and most 
of them are useful for the home table. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Make a list of the foods you know, under grain, vegetables, 
meat foods, sugar, fats. 

2. Can you give a fact that shows the egg to be a food that 
builds the body and gives energy ? 

3. Why is the body sometimes likened to an engine ? 

4. Can you tell how it is different from an engine ? 

5. Explain why milk is a food as well as a drink. 




CHAPTER II 
LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 

Lesson i 

proper foods for the school luncheon 

What are some of the foods that make a proper school lunch- 
eon ? Can we prepare any of them at school ? 

Luncheon is an interesting part of the school program, 
is it not ? especially when it is a good one. Marjorie 
Allen always takes something from home in her dainty 
luncheon box, and she is quite likely to offer a taste to 
some one else. Marjorie has sandwiches made from 
light, sweet bread, eggs especially prepared, milk, a slice 
of plain cake or a few cookies, and fruit or jelly in a 
small glass to be spread upon the bread. The different 
kinds of food are wrapped separately in paper, either 
plain and perfectly clean, or paraffined. A paper 
napkin is in the box, too. Marjorie uses a paper box, 



IO 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



which is burned afterwards with all the other papers 
and never thrown about to make the school yard untidy. 
This fall, however, Marjorie is bringing vegetables to 
school, and is talking about making cocoa. She is 
suggesting to the girls and boys in the Pleasant Valley 
School that they have a luncheon club and make 

lunch a feature of the 
day, instead of eating 
almost any thing as fast 
as possible in order to 
begin play. And what is 
the plan ? 

Planning a lunch club. 
There are several ways in 
which the club can run the 
luncheon. Of course the 
members should vote on 
the matter. The teacher 
and the mothers will be 
consulted ; and they will 
surely approve the plan, if it is workable. 

According to the old-fashioned way, each pupil brings 
a lunch in pail or box, and each has his own. The first 
step to make it pleasanter is the arrangement of some 
kind of table, which need be nothing more than boards 
set on boxes, either outdoors or inside. Paper napkins 
may be used, and a place laid for each pupil. This 
makes luncheon a picnic every day. 

There is another method, already the fashion in some 




Courtesy of Mrs. Hetty Browne. 

Fig. 3. — The boys and girls of Pleasant 
Valley have a luncheon club and make 
lunch a feature of the day. 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL n 

schools, which is not difficult. Each pupil supplies 
one kind of food material, and each takes his turn in 
bringing a different kind. Two or three furnish milk ; 
others bread or fruit or vegetables or whatever is con- 
venient, the whole scheme being planned ahead. Of 
course, the division must be fair to all ; and there is a 
chance here for some practical arithmetic in finding out 
the cost of materials and dividing the expense evenly. 

When Marjorie proposes having vegetables as well 
as fruit, somebody says, " But we can't eat them raw." 
Then why should we not cook them ? 

Cooking at school. " What can we have to cook with 
at school ? " 

This will depend upon the yard and the size of the 
school. If there is plenty of room around the building, 
you already know one simple arrangement ; for it is 
hardly possible that you have never roasted potatoes 
in the ashes of a fire out-of-doors. 

A fireplace of stones or brick may be built and vege- 
tables roasted ; an old pail may be hung on a stick laid 
across the stones or, better still, on an iron bar or rod 
which may be found in some old scrap heap or at the 
blacksmith's. Wonders can be accomplished also with 
an old stove, which some one would be glad to give. 
John Alden is an energetic boy at Pleasant Valley 
School, ready to do carpenter work or to engineer the 
making of a stone or brick fireplace for cooking food 
at school. 

If there is a shed in which it can stand, perhaps a 



12 FOOD AND HEALTH 

friend will contribute an oil stove. In the picture (Fig. 
4) you will see the equipment for cooking which may be 
made from packing boxes that the grocer gives away. 





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Courtesy of Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University. 
Fig. 4. — An equipment for cooking may be made from packing boxes. 

The boxes may be stained or painted white. This 
painting is pleasant work for a rainy day. If the 
mothers are interested in the club, they may be willing 
to give a few utensils ; but, if the members of the club 
are very independent, they can buy their own. Only 
a few are needed and the expense will be slight. 




Courtesy of President M. M. Parts, Georgia Normal and Industrial College, 
Milledgeville, Georgia. 

Fig. 5. — A neatly arranged school cupboard. 1, wide-mouthed pitcher; 
2, covered saucepans; 3, double boiler; 4, wire strainer; 5, Dover 
egg beaters ; 6, measuring cups ; 7, bowls ; 8, knives, forks, and 
spoons ; 9, " utility " plate, for cooking work. 

13 



H 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



In cold weather the luncheon can be prepared in the 
schoolroom ; and, if the heater has a flat top, cooking 
can be done on that. A fireless cooker to use at school 
is convenient and can be inexpensive. (See Lesson 26.) 
If you have never tried it, you will be surprised to see 
how many delicious luncheon dishes can be made in the 
schoolroom. 

If your school has a well-furnished cooking room, 
preparing luncheon at school is an easy matter. 



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Courtesy of Miss Jessie D. Ebert. 
Fig. 6. — Serving luncheon at the Big Tree School. 



At the Pleasant Valley School the work began with 
very simple equipments. Marjorie Allen heard of the 
school lunch club from a cousin who lives in New York 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 15 

State. Miss James, the teacher at the Pleasant Valley 
School, asked Marjorie if she would not write to her 
cousin and ask for a description of her club. This is the 
answer to Marjorie's letter : 

The Big Tree School, 1 
September 5, 1915. 
Dear Marjorie : 

Yes, indeed, our hot lunch club is a great success. 
This is the way we began : There is a farm bureau in 
Erie County, and we celebrate Corn Day. We children 
at the school had a bread contest to which everybody 
came. Our mothers and fathers were so pleased that 
one of the trustees put some cooking equipment into 
our basement, and we use an old bookcase with glass 
doors for our cupboard. There are twenty-four of us 
in our cooking class, and each family gave twenty-five 
cents for buying dishes. We brought our own note- 
books, spoons, cups and plates, aprons, soap, and hand 
towels ; and we met every Wednesday afternoon. 
Then, as we had begun to have cooking lessons, our 
teacher thought we might as well have a hot lunch ; 
so we had a warm-food club. Most of us come a long 
way and bring luncheon, and so we began by making 
only one or two hot things like cocoa, soup, stew, boiled 
rice with raisins. 

This is the way we plan for the lunches. We have a 

1 The information given in this letter was kindly furnished by Miss 
Jessie D. Ebert, District No. 27, Hamburg, Erie County, New York. Some 
of these facts were published in the East Aurora Advertiser, May 27, 1915, 
and others were written in a private letter. 



16 FOOD AND HEALTH 

committee that meets our teacher at twelve o'clock 
every Friday, and plans luncheon for every day for next 
week. We decide which of us shall furnish food and 
what food each one of us shall bring. We name the 
helpers for preparing the food each day, also. At one 
o'clock the committee passes a slip to those who are to 
furnish food, telling what food they are to bring and on 
what day. Sometimes one girl or boy changes with 
another. We have a book and keep a list of everything, 
so that nobody shall do more than his share. Usually 
each family does not furnish food more than once a 
month. It does not cost so very much either, — about 
ten cents each time one of us brings something. Here 
are some of the other things that we like : potato soup, 
baked beans, bean soup, tomato soup. Sometimes we 
make the things at home when mother is willing, and 
bring a pan of beans or macaroni, or something else, to 
be warmed up. Some of us did not join the club, but 
any one who is not a member may buy a cup of hot food 
for one cent. Usually two girls are appointed to do the 
cooking. Sometimes it is begun before school or at 
recess. At. 11:45 tne girls finish the luncheon; then 
we wash our hands, and sit down at our desks to be 
served. The girls, with one or two others to help, serve 
all of us. We take turns in washing the dishes ; and it 
is funny that we never seem to mind it at school. We 
would not give up our lunch club for anything. 

Your affectionate cousin, 

Polly. 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 17 

Packing the luncheon. When food is done up in 
packages, it should be neatly wrapped (see page 301). 

If called on to act as judges in a luncheon-box con- 
test, we might draw up for ourselves a score card like 
the following : 



SCORE CARD 

LUNCHEON-BOX CONTEST 

Rating 

1. Neatness of box or wrapper 5 

2. Appearance of the inside of the box 25 

Neatness 
Daintiness 

3. Quality and preparation of food 35 

Excellence of preparation 

4. Selection of food 35 

Fitness for purpose 

100 



Courtesy of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. 



EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 



1. Make a list of simple utensils that would help you in pre- 
paring food at school. You can recall those used at home. 

2. What plan can you make for washing dishes ? 

3. Can you think of some way of avoiding dishwashing, or of 
having as little as possible ? 

4. Make a list of luncheon dishes that you think you might 
make at school. 



1 8 FOOD AND HEALTH 

Lesson 2 

water and fruit beverage 

What can we prepare to drink at school in addition to water, 
on warm days in fall and spring ? 

Let us think about some of the ways of making 
agreeable cool and hot beverages. 

Fruit juices with water. " What fruits may be used 
in place of or with lemon juice ? " 

The answer to this is very simple : any fruit that is 
acid and juicy, and has a decided flavor, makes a pleas- 
ant drink. The beverage is wholesome, if one does not 
take too much and if it is not too sweet. Perhaps we 
are all more used to making lemonade than any other 
fruit drink, but the Pleasant Valley Club is trying other 
fruits on some of the warm days in September. Marjorie 
Allen experiments at home ; when she sees that her 
Mother is warm and tired, she surprises her with a glass 
of cool fruit juice and water. Strawberry, currant, and 
raspberry juices are delicious in this way, and so is 
the juice from tart summer apples, slightly cooked. 
Canned fruits, jellies, or jam may be used ; and, if the 
flavor is flat, a little lemon juice or cream of tartar may 
be added. 

u How does Marjorie make the fruit juice into a re- 
freshing drink ? " 

Marjorie sees first that the water is cooling. She 
allows one fourth to one third cup of sugar to a quart 
of water. Can you explain why the quantity of sugar 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 19 

varies from time to time ? If it is convenient, she melts 
the sugar in some hot water. Why ? Next she pre- 
pares the" fruit. The lemons must be washed, cut in 
two and squeezed, and have the seeds strained out. A 
glass lemon squeezer costs only five cents and is very 
handy. Two or three lemons to a quart of water will 
be enough, depending on the size of the lemons. 

If Marjorie is working with another kind of fruit, 
she must squeeze the juice out, sometimes after cooking. 
The amount used must be " to taste " ; or, if currant 
jelly is at hand, two or three teaspoonfuls to a glass 
of water are enough. 

Marjorie has a dainty way of tasting things with two 
spoons, one for dipping out, and the other for the tast- 
ing. Finally, the water, sugar, and juice are mixed in 
a pitcher and cooled on the ice. When there is not ice, 
wrap a wet cloth around the pitcher and set it in the 
breeze. Do you know why this cools it ? 

These beverages may be prepared at school as easily 
as at home. Here is a chance to use your arithmetic 
in calculating the quantity. 

A cool drink. On a hot day, the men in the field are 
glad of some refreshing drink. One of the girls in the 
Pleasant Valley School was taught by her grandmother 
how to make an old-fashioned beverage. 

Have ready molasses, cream of tartar or vinegar, 
ground ginger, and nutmeg. Use about a quarter of a 
cup of molasses to a quart of water, and a teaspoonful 
of cream of tartar, which some people think more whole- 



20 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



some than the vinegar. Stir into the molasses a tea- 
spoonful of ground ginger and a grating of nutmeg, 
and mix all with the water. It is better when one is 
heated to have a cool, rather than an ice-cold drink ; 
the temperature of well water is cool enough. 

Fruit-ade. A fruit drink is sometimes called fruit- 
ade ; and sometimes, fruit punch. 

If the girls become very expert, they may be invited 
to make and serve a fruit beverage at a meeting of the 
Woman's Club or at some evening entertainment. 
Do not be afraid to try experiments with several kinds 
of fruit at a time. Use lemon juice first ; add a glass 
of currant jelly, and a can of cherries or raspberries. 
Cut a banana in small pieces and serve in the fruit 

punch. Does some one 
say, "How odd to spend 
so much time talking 
about fruit juice and 
drink ! ;" 

Why are fruit juices 
valuable ? They contain 
something most valuable 
to the body, — the mineral 
matter that you cannot 
see. How much better 
to take iron in fruit juice 
than in patent medicine. 
It not only tastes better, 
but the body can use 




Courtesy of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. 

Fig. 7. — An old-fashioned open well is 
subject to surface wash. 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 



21 



the iron in fruit when that in the medicine bottle 
is useless. 

Why should we be careful about drinking pure water 
freely ? Water is the important material in all our 
beverages, and we need to remember to drink it clear 
as well as flavored with 



other substances. It is 
found, too, in almost all 
our foods. Several years 
ago, when a number of 
Zuni Indians were visiting 
the large cities of the 
eastern United States, some 
one asked them what was 
the most interesting ob- 
ject they had seen. One 
of them replied, " Water. 
You have all you want, 
and you can always get it 
out of a pipe in the wall." 
To people who live in dry- 
lands, water is a precious 
thing. Do you know that 
we can live longer without food than without water ? 
It' helps to build the body, it aids digestion, it carries 
off waste matter, and it helps to keep the body at 
an even heat. It is given off from the body all 
the time, and therefore we need to drink freely many 
times a day. We may take it at meals ; if we do not 




Year Book. Department of Agriculture, 1914- 

Fig. 8. — We cannot be too careful 
about the place from which the water 
comes. A cemented cover and care- 
fully adjusted pump prevent surface 
wash. 



22 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



drink it to wash down food, but between mouthfuls. 
Be careful to drink rather slowly ; then you need not 
hesitate to take as much as you want. 

Yet this water may 
bring us illness, — and this 
we must study to prevent. 
Even though water is 
sparkling and clean, it 
may still be impure. As 
we cannot judge by its 
appearance, we must find 
out where the water comes 
from. 

Keeping water pure. 
Nature has many ways 
of making water clean. 
Some of them are : letting 
it filter through the soil, 
purifying it in ponds and 
rivers ; in both of which 
processes some of the 
lower forms of life known 
as bacteria, help. But 
when we allow large 
quantities of filth to get into the water, nature cannot 
always work fast enough, harmful bacteria grow, and 
sickness results if people drink the water. Typhoid 
fever, malaria, and other diseases are often due to 
impure water. We cannot be too careful about the 




United States Department of Agriculture. Year Book, 
1914. 

Fig. 9. — A cement or stone cover, with 
a trough beneath the spout of the 
pump, is a necessary protection for 
a dug well. 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 



23 



place from which the water comes ; for such a disease 
as typhoid is often carried to people far away, and many 
lives are lost because some one person or family has been 
careless. 

The picture (Fig. 10) shows how unclean material 
may seep into a well from a barnyard or outhouse. 







_L_ ^_ 



■•••■■>•■•■' 



Virginia Health Bulletin, June, 1913. 
Fig. io. — Unclean material may seep into a well from a barnyard. 

Let each girl and boy study the water supply at home. 
If the water comes from a spring, see whether the spring 
is cleaned every year and covered. Are farm animals 
allowed near it ? Is the well covered ? (See Fig. 9.) 
Is it cleaned every year ? Are slops ever poured near 
it ? It is a good plan to have cement around the well. 
Remember that health costs less than sickness. At 



24 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



times, if the doctor says that sickness has come from 
the water, it should be boiled before drinking. 

Be watchful, too, about ice, because freezing does not 
kill certain harmful germs. If the ice is dirty and, 
indeed, unless you are very sure that.it has come from 




Courtesy of Medical Review of Reviews. 
Common drinking glass Recently washed glass 

Fig. ii.- — Do not use public drinking cups. 

a clean source, cool the water on the ice and never put 
the ice into the water. 

Be careful to drink from a clean cup. Sore throats 
and even consumption (tuberculosis) may result, if 
more than one person drink from one cup or dipper. 
Each pupil should have his own cup. Paper cups cost 
very little. The luncheon club at the Pleasant Valley 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 



25 



School has decided to use them. Do not use public 
drinking cups. (Fig. 11.) 

After a sad time, when diphtheria raged among the 
pupils of a school in another section, the Woman's Club 
of that town gave 
to the school a 
pump like that in 
the picture (Fig. 
12). Do you see 
that the water is 
bubbling up and 
that the girl is 
drinking without a 
cup ? 

Water may con- 
tain lime and iron 
that make it 
"hard." If there 
is a large amount 
of the lime, it is 
best to boil the 
water for drinking. 
If the inside of 
the teakettle has a 
coating of lime, then you are using the kind of hard 
water that is improved by boiling. Sometimes to make 
water soft it is distilled. This is done by catching and 
cooling the steam. A distilling apparatus is made for 
home use. 




Courtesy of the U. S. Bureau of Education. Bulletin 1914, No. 12. 

Fig. 12. — At the Pleasant Valley School a drinking 
fountain is attached to the pump. The water is 
bubbling up and the girl is drinking without a cup. 



26 FOOD AND HEALTH 



EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 



i. Make a sketch of your water supply at home with its sur- 
roundings. 

2. Make some plan for improving the water supply. 

3. In what ways does water become impure ? 

4. Why is it important to use individual cups ? 

5. How much lemonade or other beverage would you prepare 
for fifty people ? Estimate the cost. 

6. What fruits growing in your locality, including wild berries, 
can be used for making beverages ? 

7. Explain why fruit juice is wholesome. 

Lesson 3 
cocoa for the school luncheon 

Cocoa is easy to prepare for the school luncheon on the cold 
days of winter. What is the value of this and of other hot bever- 
ages ; and what are some of the important things to think about 
in cooking them ? 

Milk or cream, and sugar give hot drinks some value 
as food. Grown people use coffee and tea because there 
is a substance in both of them, besides the flavor, that 
they think has a pleasant effect upon their nerves, 
although in the end most people would be better without 
either. Very agreeable beverages are made from 
roasted grain, and several of these can be bought. Of 
course, girls and boys do not take either tea or coffee ; 
but there is no reason why they should not have a cup 
of cocoa for breakfast, and on cool days make it for the 
school luncheon. 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 



27 



What is cocoa ? Cocoa and chocolate are manufac- 
tured from a seed somewhat like a bean, that grows in 
hot countries. The bean is roasted and ground, and 
from it chocolate is made. Cocoa is chocolate with 
the fat taken out. If you have ever seen cocoa butter, 




Gourtesy of Miss Myra Hunt. 
Fig. 13. — A well-arranged school kitchen. 



you know how this fat looks. Which will have the more 
food value, cocoa or chocolate ? 

How to cook. Let us now plan to make cocoa at 
school. 

Cooking should be as dainty and pretty work as 
painting or sewing. We can make it so if we arrange 
neatly on the table everything to work with and do not 
spill food materials. 

The illustration (Fig. 15) shows some convenient 
measures. See how the cups are divided. Of course, 



28 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



«■ 




Courtesy of the Forecast Magazine. 
Fig. 14. — A neat working table and worker. Notice the fireless cooker. 




United States Department of Commerce, Circular of the Bureau of Standards, No. 55. 

Fig. 15. — Cups and spoons like these are convenient household measures. 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 



29 




Fig. 16 The spoonfuls in measuring should be level. 

everyday spoons will do. The spoonfuls in measuring 
should be level. (See Fig. 16.) 

When we cook, we should plan everything carefully, 
and take out what we need for work. This saves time 
and steps. We must think beforehand of: 

1. What to take. 

2. How much of each kind. 

3. What utensils to use. 

4. How to put the materials together. 

5. How to cook these materials, — apply heat. 

6. How to serve the cooked food. 



These are what the cook books tell you about in what 
is called a " recipe " or " receipt." 

Mollie Stark, another Pleasant Valley schoolgirl, 
is making her own cook book. Suppose we all 
begin to do so, too. Mollie is using a notebook 
with loose leaves, such as we have in school. If the 
cover of your notebook is not a pretty color, you 
can make one of some washable material, in the sewing 



3 o FOOD AND HEALTH 

class, perhaps, or for home work. Mollie illustrates her 
book either with drawings or with pictures pasted in. 

Making the cocoa. A quart of cocoa serves six people 
very well, for the cups we drink from hold less than a 
half pint. How many quarts of cocoa shall you need 
for them ? 

Let us now, one by one, think of the points we must 
remember. 

Cocoa. 

What to use. 1 Cocoa, sugar, water, milk. 

How much to take. Equal parts of water and milk. 8 tea- 
spoonfuls of powdered cocoa to a quart of liquid. The same 
amount of sugar as of cocoa. 

Utensils. This depends upon the amount of cocoa, does 
it not ? You can plan this easily yourself. Remember 
that a large pail or kettle full needs a long spoon for stirring. 

How to make. This is the one way that saves dishes : Heat 
the water and milk together. Mix together the cocoa and 
sugar, dry. When the liquid begins to bubble, throw in the 
dry materials, and begin to beat and stir as fast as you can. 
When the cocOa and sugar are all dissolved, your beverage is 
ready. 

How to serve. Have a dipper and the cups all ready. Re- 
member, if you do not spill, there is nothing to clean up. 

There are other ways of making cocoa. Try more 
than one. Some girl in the club may know another 
way, or your teacher may have another recipe. How 
shall you know which is best ? It is the way that makes 

1 Hereafter, for convenience, simply What, How much, Utensils, How 
to make, and How to serve, will be used. 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 



3i 




Courtesy of Miss Jennie Shields. 
Fig. 17. — Cocoa is easy to prepare for the school luncheon. 

the smoothest cocoa, with the fewest dishes, and with 
the least work. 

The Dutch people, who manufacture cocoa, also make 
it well. They always beat it to make it smooth. If 
you can have a large " Dover " egg beater, a few 
minutes' beating, while the cocoa is still on the stove, 
makes it free from grains and lumps. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. How many liquid teaspoonfuls make a tablespoonful ? 

2. How many dry ? 

3. How can you divide a dry spoonful in halves ? 

4. How many tablespoonfuls are there to a quarter cup ? To 
a whole cup ? 

5. Copy your cocoa recipe in your notebook. 

6. Begin a table of measures, and leave space for more. 



32 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



Lesson 4 

the value of milk as a food 

How can we use milk for the school lunches ? 

A glass of cool, clean milk is one of the best possible 

foods for luncheon at school. Sip milk very slowly ; for, 

if you gulp it down, you may have indigestion. Carry 




Virginia Health Bulletin, July, 1912. 



Fig. 18. — Do not let milk stand in this way. 

it to school in a clean bottle, and keep it in a cool place. 
Would you like a little change from plain milk, either at 
school or at home ? 

Renneted milk, or junket. 

What. Milk, sugar, a flavoring, rennet tablets (bought at 
the grocer's). The flavoring may be vanilla, or nutmeg, or 
cocoa dissolved in the milk. 



How much. 



i quart of milk 

\ cup of sugar 

i teaspoonful vanilla 

A few gratings nutmeg 

I tablet, usually 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 33 

Utensils. Something for warming the milk ; something to 
hold the milk ; measuring implements. 

How to make. Junket is a dish that needs no cooking. 
Warm the milk slightly on the stove, or set it in the sun in an 
open dish. Stir the sugar and flavoring into the milk. Dis- 
solve the tablet in a little water, and stir it into the milk. 
Let the dish of milk stand in a warm place ; and then cool it, 
when the milk becomes firm. 

How to serve. Serve just as it is, in saucers, or with berries 
or fruit juices, or with cream and a little sugar. 

Why is junket digestible ? Do you know what the 
rennet is ? It contains the same substance that helps 
to digest the milk in our bodies, as we usually take it. 
The junket is partly digested then, and agrees with some 
people who cannot take milk plain. 

Cheese from sour milk. 

What. A pan, or dish, of soured milk that is firm. Salt 
is enough to add, but a little butter or cream improves it. 

How much. This cheese can be made without measure- 
ments, and salted to taste. 

Utensils. The pan that holds the milk, a bowl, and a piece 
of clean cheesecloth. 

How to make. Heat the milk until the whey separates, 
but not until the curd toughens. Put the cheesecloth into 
the bowl. Pour in the milk. Lift the cloth, let the whey 
run out, squeeze it a little ; and then, if the curd in the cloth 
is not dry enough, tie the cloth together and hang by the 
string where the rest of the whey will drip. Later salt the 
curd, and add a little soft butter or cream. 

How to serve. Serve the whey to the chickens. They wijl 
appreciate it. Make the curd into balls and cool. It is deli- 
cious with gingerbread for supper. You can take it to school 



34 FOOD AND HEALTH 

in a cup or jar. Try putting it into a sandwich with a little 
currant jelly spread on, too. That does sound odd, but see 
if you do not like it. 

Why is good milk, and clean milk so important ? 
We are quite right in Europe and in America in think- 
ing that milk is a useful part of our diet ; and even in 
Japan and China, where milk has not been used in the 
past, the people are beginning to take it as food. 

What is the value of milk ? In the first chapter we 
have seen how the growth, strength, and warmth of 
young animals show milk to contain substances that 
build the body and give energy. Indeed, it is a perfect 
food for the young and an excellent food for grown 
people. The grown-ups and you must remember that 
milk is true food to be taken instead of some other food, 
and not in place of water plus the other food. This is 
a very important fact, for some people add milk to a 
meal when they have eaten enough of other things ; 
and then they say that milk does not agree with them. 
It should always be partaken of slowly. 

Hot milk is a good thing sometimes, especially when 
one feels a little " faint " for food. Some forenoon 
when Mother looks tired, give her a cup of milk heated 
almost to the boiling point ; add a tiny pinch of salt ; 
and, if she does not like the taste, stir in a teaspoonful 
of fruit juice. It will make her feel rested, and will 
give her nourishment. 

What does milk contain ? This picture (Fig. 19) 
shows what is found in milk, when the chemist separates 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 35 

the parts. You have seen the dairy separator remove 
the cream. The curd and the whey separate when milk 
sours or when rennet is used. The chemist can do more. 
He can take out the sugar, which gives the sweet taste, 




Courtesy of President Gulliver, Rockford College. 

Fig. 19. — Composition of milk. I, whole milk; 2, water; 3, fat; 4, protein; 
5, carbohydrate; 6, mineral matter or ash. 

and the mineral matter, which gives iron, lime, and other 
things needed for body building and health. 

The word " Protein." The curd of the milk has some- 
thing in it that is found in somewhat the same form in 
meat, fish, and eggs ; and also in nuts, old beans, and 
peas ; and in grain seeds. It is a substance without 
which we starve, and which you might be satisfied to 
call " meat food." But why not learn its name, pro- 
tein? You cannot understand just what protein is 
until you study chemistry ; and then you will learn 
among other things that it contains nitrogen, a gas 
that is all around us in the air. We breathe it in with 
every breath, and out again. Nitrogen stays in our 



36 FOOD AND HEALTH 

bodies only when we take it in our food in this substance 
called protein. Marjorie Allen found the word in 
one of the Farmers' Bulletins about feeding animals. 
Ask you father about it, too. If you are studying a 
little agriculture in school, you are learning something 
about nitrogen in fertilizers ; for plants must have 
it, as well as animals. Neither can live without it. 
The protein is both a body builder and a fuel food. 

Why is milk a substitute for more costly food ? When 
milk is compared with the other animal foods that con- 
tain protein, we begin to realize how very valuable it 
is. Does it astonish you to be told that a quart of milk 
equals in food value a pound of steak or eight eggs ? 

Why must we have clean milk ? Milk must be very 
clean, for in any dirt there may be the germs of sickness. 
Even clean milk will sour in time. Souring means the 
presence of one kind of " germ " or bacteria, — invisible 
tiny living things that form the acid. These do 
not injure us, but other bacteria may be harmful. Ty- 
phoid fever, tuberculosis, and other serious illnesses are 
carried in milk, cream, and butter. " Clean milk " 
is the best advertisement for those who produce it to 
sell. Also, when one has milk for home use one must 
be careful for the health of the family. 

Begin with the cow. The cow must be in good health, 
well fed, kept in a clean barn or stable ; the milker 
must have clean hands and clean clothes ; and the 
pails, cans, and bottles should be as clean as boiling 
water, soapsuds, and sunshine can make them. The 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 



37 



milk must be cooled as quickly as possible. In the most 
up-to-date dairy farms, the cow is washed and curried ! 
This means much trouble and labor. People who buy 
milk must learn to pay enough for it, so that the farmer 
can keep the milk clean. " Since a quart of milk equals 




Courtesy of Walker-Gordon Laboratory Co. 
Fig. 20. — Notice how clean everything looks in this picture of milking time. 

a pound of steak or eight eggs in food value, milk even 
at 15 to 20 cents a quart is more economical than meat 
and eggs at ordinary prices. At the usual price (city) 
of 8 to 10 cents a quart, milk is very economical." l 
Some day we may all learn the lesson of cleanliness. 



1 See Foods and Household Management. 
Co., page 150. 



Kinne-Cooley, Macmillan 



38 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



Then we shall not have the tragedy of many deaths in 
some city, even of little children, because of an impure 
milk supply. 

Milk in the home. Milk must be kept cool and very 
clean in the house. This is where ice is a comfort and 
saves milk and work. You cannot have the pans for 
milk too clean. The vessel for holding milk, whatever 
it is, — pan, pail, pitcher, or bottle, — 
should be rinsed in cold water, washed 
in strong, clean soapsuds, rinsed in clean 
boiling water, and dried in a sunny 
place ; or, in rainy weather, near the 
stove. The place where the milk stands 
must be clean and washed off daily. 

If you have no ice on hot, muggy 
summer days, scald the milk when it is 
fresh, to keep it from souring. It is 
better to let the pans or other containers 
drain dry from the boiling water than 
to wipe them, even with the cleanest 
towel. Cool the milk as quickly as you can, and 
keep it as cool as possible. Mr. and Mrs. Allen 
believe milk to be so necessary to the health of the 
family that they have one cow whose milk is for family 
use. Every one in the country who can have even a 
small barn and pasture, should try to have a cow. 

What is the value of skimmed milk ? As only the 
fat has been removed, skimmed milk is useful for many 
purposes. We know that it is fed to farm animals. 




United males Department 
of Agriculture. Farmers' 
Bulletin, No. 51 . 

Fig. 21. — A covered 
milk pail helps to 
keep dirt out of 
the milk. 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 39 

Although we may not care to drink it, skim milk can 
be used in cooking, when some cheaper fat, like suet or 
" butterine," takes the place of the fat taken off in the 
cream. 

Is there any use for sour milk ? Clean milk, soured, 
forms a smooth curd, which some people like with sugar, 
for a dessert. It is very delicious in this way on a hot 
day, especially if a little fruit juice is taken with it. 
And what an easy dessert to prepare for dinner or 
supper ! Another way to use sour milk, is to beat 
it thoroughly and drink it. Cheese is made from 
the sour milk. We shall learn later about using sour 
milk in cooking. 

Why, then, is it important to use clean milk freely in 
our diet ? Suppose you write down the answer, that 
you may be sure to have all the points. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Why does milk take the place of meat or eggs at a meal, 
rather than of potatoes ? What are the three fuel foods in milk ? 

2. Since 1 quart of milk equals eight eggs in food value, is milk 
or eggs the more economical food at the time you are studying this ? 
How can you find out ? 

3. Why does cream cost more than milk ? 

4. If there is a dairy on your farm, find out how many quarts 
of milk make a pound of butter. 

5. What are the substances left in the skimmed milk ? 

6. See if you can decide what is left in buttermilk. Has it any 
food value ? 

7. In what ways can we be sure that milk is kept clean ? 



4 o FOOD AND HEALTH 

Lesson 5 
bread a staple food 

Bread is a staple food for the school luncheon and for all meals. 
If you cannot make it at school, make it at home and have a bread 
contest at school. How can we plan for this bread contest ? 

One day in fall, when the Pleasant Valley Luncheon 
Club was eating sandwiches under the trees, one of the 
girls remarked : " Isn't it funny that our sandwiches 
look so different ! I don't mean what is inside, but the 
bread itself. It is different colors, and the holes are 
different sizes, and some of the bread is crumbly and 
some is moist. Isn't it queer that bread isn't just the 
same always ! " 

" My mother didn't have luck with her bread this 
week," Marjorie Allen said. John Alden replied," My 
father says, ' Don't talk about luck : that's a lazy 
man's excuse ! ' " 

" Well," Marjorie began, her face flushing, — but 
Barbara Frietchie said quickly: "It's late for our 
county fair, but why can't we have a bread contest 
here ? Everybody says it's an accomplishment to make 
good breads Didn't you read about a contest last week 
in the ' Pleasant Valley News ' ? " 

" Yes, indeed," they all said, "■ we'll ask Miss James !" 

" A good idea," said the teacher, " and just the time, 
for we are beginning percentage, and this is where the 
boys can help." 

But John Stark looked very determined. " If there 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 



4i 



is going to be a bread contest, I am in it. My brother 
is a mining engineer, and last time he was at home, he 
learned how to make yeast bread, Mother's way. He 
said bread often is pretty poor, where he stays." 




Fig. 22. 



Courtesy of Mrs. Hetty S. Browne. 
Who says boys can't cook ? " 



This is the way the club planned their contests. 
Miss James thought it better to wait until the in- 
structor in household economics came from the State 
College to talk to the Woman's Club and to visit the 
school. 

When Miss James received a letter saying that Miss 



4 2 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



Travers would be there on a certain date, each pupil 
who wished to engage in the contest made a loaf by the 
rule used at home, and brought it to school to be judged 
on the day of the visit. Miss Travers used a score 
put on the blackboard, and explained that, for an accu- 
rate contest, all *the loaves should be made by one 
recipe. She gave a demonstration of her own rule, 




Courtesy of the Department of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College, Columbia University. 
Fig. 23. — A loaf of this shape and size bakes evenly. 

making the bread from the materials that the club 
had supplied. She explained that hers was a good 
and exact recipe, though probably no better than many 
of those familiar to the mothers of Pleasant Valley. 
The mothers had been invited to the school ; and 
many of them were present and enjoyed the demon- 
stration and the lecture. They helped by asking 
practical questions. 

A bread score. This is the Bread Score as Miss 
Travers explained it. Do you understand it ? 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 43 



BREAD SCORE CARD 



I. General Appearance 15 % 

1. Shape 2.5 % 

2. Size 2.5 % 

3. Crust .... - 10..0 % 

(#) Color 
(£) Smoothness 
II. Internal Appearance 55 % 

1. Depth of crust 10% 

2. Texture (lightness) 15 % 

3. Crumb 30% 

, . [Moisture 1 . ^ x 

W L, . . (25 %) 
v y 1 Elasticity J v ° /c " 

(« Color . . ( 5 %) 

III. Flavor 30% 

100 % 



If you read it carefully you can see that all the points 
mentioned are important, and that the different per 
cents show the importance of the points when compared 
with each other. 

What are the points in good bread ? Notice the shape 
of the loaves in the picture (Fig. 23). A loaf of this 
x shape and size bakes evenly. The crust should be a 
golden brown and tender rather than hard and tough. 
The color of the crumb — the inside of the loaf — 
should be creamy rather than snow white ; the holes, 

1 Courtesy of Department of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College, 
Columbia University. See, also, Bulletin 25, University of Illinois. 



44 FOOD AND HEALTH 

small and evenly distributed ; and when the crumb is 
pressed between the thumb and finger, it should be soft 
and springy, but not doughy. Some people like a 
rather open, dry bread, and others a closer and moister 
grain ; but it must be baked through to the very center, 
in any case. And the flavor — who can describe ex- 
actly the sweet, almost nutty taste of good bread, free 




Courtesy of the Extension Department, Ohio Slate University. 

Fig. 24. — 1 has a poor shape and texture; 2, good shape and texture; 
3 has a poor shape. 

from a taint of yeast or sourness ! We all enjoy it 
when it is perfect. It is indeed a science and an art to 
make it so. 

What is the value of white bread as food ? Even 
before scientists explained to us the true value of 
bread, the human race had learned to prize bread made 
from ground wheat. Bread is called the " staff of 
life," as you know. Bread made from other grains is 
useful and palatable. In the pioneer days of America, 
" brown " bread was made largely from corn and rye 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 



45 



meal ; and we enjoy this kind of bread even now. We 
may have whole wheat, or graham, or rye alone ; but 
white flour bread is our main dependence. 1 

Hear what the scientists say. 

What does bread contain ? Bread made from white 
flour contains all the stuffs necessary in food. 

If you should make a list of 
what the bread contains and com- 
pare this with a list that shows 
the different foodstuffs 2 found in 
milk, you would find them to be 
almost the same, but not occurring 
in the same amounts. The bread 
contains less mineral matter than 
milk, and therefore is not quite 
a perfect food. It has but little 
water, and a large quantity of 
something that is not found in the 
milk ; that is, starch. Curiously 
enough starch and sugar are very 
much alike ; and Mother Nature, 
who is a wonderful chemist, can 
change one into the other. Indeed, you may have 
learned from lessons in physiology or hygiene that when 
we eat starch it is changed to sugar by the digestive 
juices before it is absorbed and carried about by the 
blood. The protein is found in the gluten, which you 

1 See Foods and Household Management. Kinne-Cooley, Chap. XII. 

2 See page 294. 




Courtesy of Washburn Crosby Co. 

Fig. 25. — A dissected grain 
of wheat. 



46 FOOD AND HEALTH 

can easily obtain by tying some flour in a cloth, and 
washing out the starch. 

Why are so many foodstuffs found in wheat ? Is it 
not interesting that in the grain of wheat the same 
kinds of materials are stored to feed the baby plant 
that nature supplies in milk for the young animal, the 
little plant drinking water from the soil ? There is 
so much of this food in the grain, that it is worth while 
for man to use it himself as food. 

Why is bread a cheap food ? The scientists tell us, 
too, that for ten cents' worth of bread we can have more 
body-building material and energy than from ten cents' 
worth of any other kind of food, even of cheese, beef, eggs, 
milk, potatoes. 1 When Miss Travers asked the ques- 
tion at the beginning of this paragraph, Pleasant Valley 
pupils answered it, after a few minutes' discussion. 
See if you can answer at least in part. You can buy a 
heavier weight either of milk at 9 cents per quart or of 
potatoes at 60 cents a bushel ; but the milk gives less 
energy, and the potatoes less building material, than the 
bread. 

Should we ever buy baker's bread ? One of the 
mothers present asked Miss Travers if it is economical 
to buy bread. Her answer was : " It depends upon 
what you are trying to save. In the summer it saves 
heat in the kitchen, and your time and strength. The 
bread costs a little more per loaf than when it is made 
at home." 

1 U. S. Department of Agriculture. Farmers' Bulletin 487. 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 



47 



Some one also asked if it were "just as good" as 
homemade, and Miss Travers replied : " That depends 
upon the baker, and the bakery laws of the state. 
It should be good, because the baker has an oven that 
is better than that in the home stove, but he does not 



p«I 




Courtesy of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. 
Fig. 26. — Pans for baking bread, cake, and pastry, of tin, iron, and enameled 



always use good material, and work in a clean place. 
We must all work together to see that bakery laws are 
made and enforced, for it is said that about fifty per cent 
of the bread used in this country comes from the bakery. 
But there is nothing in the world better than the best 
home bread. And do you not think every girl should 
learn to make it ? " Everybody said, " Yes/' to this 
question ; and the pupils went home, anxious to have a 
proper bread contest as soon as possible. One pleasant 
fact about such a contest is that it is possible for all to 



48 FOOD AND HEALTH 

win, since you compete with a standard for bread, and 
not with each other. 



EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Make a list of the foodstuffs contained in bread ; that is, 
starch, sugar, etc. 

2. Explain why bread costs less than milk. 

3. Separate the gluten from the rest of the flour, as explained 
in the text, knead and stretch it. 

4. Can you tell what winter wheat is ? spring wheat ? the dif- 
ference between them ? 

Lesson 6 
making bread 
How shall we make bread for the contest ? 

What kind of flour shall we buy ? In order to make 
the bread contest exact and fair to all, the loaves should 
be made from the same kind of flour. Different brands 
of flour make different kinds of bread, the quality of 
the flour depending upon the variety of wheat and upon 
the method of manufacture. Modern flour mills pro- 
duce an excellent flour. 1 



A good bread flour is creamy in color, feels grainy 
to the touch, and contains a large amount of gluten. 
Spring wheat grown in the northwestern part of United 
States has more gluten and less starch than winter wheat 
living in the ground through the winter farther south, 
and makes a good flour for yeast bread. Some people 

1 Foods and Household Management. Kinne-Cooley, Chapter XII. 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 49 

who are judges of flour, like a mixture of spring and win- 
ter wheat flour for bread. 

Why is yeast put into bread ? Something is needed to 
make the bread light and porous ; yeast is used for this 
purpose. This is a fact already known to you. People 
have used yeast for many years in making bread, but 
it was not- until the microscope gave us eyes to-see small 







- , - s 

Buchanan's Household Bacteriology. 
Fig. 27. — One form of yeast seen through a powerful microscope. 

things, that we could learn what yeast really is and how 
it works. If you should look at yeast through a power- 
ful microscope, you would see something like this pic- 
ture (Fig. 27). Even then you would need to be told 
that this tiny object has life, and that it is a tiny one- 
celled plant. As new cells develop in the bread, one 
budding out from another, a gas is formed. This gas, 
as it expands, makes the bread " rise," as we say. 
The gas is of the same kind that we breathe out from 
our lungs ; its name is carbon dioxide. Alcohol is also 
formed. Both the gas and the alcohol pass off in the 
baking. 



5° 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



What does the yeast need, to form new cells? If 

you stop a moment to recall what all plant life needs 
for growth, you can decide what these tiny cells want, 
too, — food, warmth, moisture. The yeast cells find 
food in the flour and moisture in the liquid mixed with 
the flour. We must give them warmth. 

Now you understand why, in winter time, the bread 
dough is put in a warm place. The yeast cell is not 
killed by moderate cold, but, like the trees, it does not 
bud when it is cold. And the reason why soft, or com- 
pressed, yeast cake, and liquid yeast are kept cool, is 
that the yeast cells may not bud and increase, until 
we want them to do so. The tiny yeast is like what we 
usually call a plant in another way. During a drought 
when everything has turned brown and looks dead, 
you have seen grass grow green in a few hours after 
the welcome rain falls again. Thus, will the yeast 
cell remain dry for a length of time, to bud and 
increase when moisture is supplied. Does not this 
explain the dry yeast cake, in which thousands of the 
tiny cells are mixed with meal, dried and kept ready 
for use ? 

Where does yeast come from ? The story of the 
yeast is a very pretty one, and might be used as the 
subject of a composition in school. If all the liquid 
yeast and beer, which always contains yeast, should be 
thrown away, and all the compressed and dried yeast 
cakes burned, would the yeast cells be lost to us, and 
could we have no more yeast bread ? No, indeed ! We 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 51 

could begin all over again, and set a trap to catch the 
" wild " yeast cells that are present in the air, clinging 
to fruit and other things, and growing wherever they 
have a chance. What would the trap be like ? Your 
mother may have caught the cells already ; for when 
canned fruit or preserves "work," "the busy little yeast 
cell is there, finding just what it needs to make it com- 
fortable, — and it thrives on sugar in small quantities. 
Have you ever heard of " salt rising " bread, made with- 
out adding yeast ? Here again the wild yeast was in 
the flour probably, ready to develop in the dough. 
It is more convenient, though, to cultivate the cells and 
to keep them ready to use whenever we wish. 

Perhaps your mother keeps liquid yeast on hand. 
Dry yeast cakes and compressed yeast are useful and 
convenient, however, and save the trouble of making 
the liquid yeast. 

What else do we put in bread ? We use a liquid, — 
either water or milk, or some of both, — and salt. We 
sometimes add a little sugar, and some form of fat, — 
butter or " butterine " or lard, — which makes the 
bread and crust less tough. Some people dislike the 
taste of lard in bread. Those who like a moist bread, 
add a mealy mashed potato. 

Dried currants, or raisins, and nut meats make a 
pleasant variety in bread, especially when it is made of 
graham flour. Part of the bread dough can have extra 
fat and sugar put into it, with a little spice and dried 
fruit, to be baked in biscuit or rolls. 



52 FOOD AND HEALTH 

A simple rule for white bread. 

What. The materials have already been given. 

How much. I part of liquid to 3 of flour, or 1 cup of liquid 
to 3 of flour, for a loaf. The quantity of liquid varies because 
flour differs. You have to learn by practice. Make the 
liquid half water and half milk. The milk should be scalded. 
Why ? 1 teaspoonful of salt to a loaf. 

The quantity of yeast varies. The more yeast, the shorter 
time for rising. § yeast cake is enough to a loaf, if the bread 
is mixed overnight; \ cake, if mixed in the morning. 1 or 2 
teaspoonfuls of sugar to a loaf, — if sugar is used. 1 or 2 
teaspoonfuls of shortening, or fat, to a loaf. 

Utensils. Make your own list of utensils. 

How to make. The thing to be most careful about in mixing 
the bread, is the warmth of all the materials. The yeast does 
its best work for us at about 70°-8o° F. (Can you read a 
thermometer ?) This is the temperature of a warm summer 
day. In cold weather, all the materials, even the flour, should 
stand in a warm place before the mixing. 

a. Stir together the yeast, liquid, and sugar when used. 
Dissolve the yeast in a little water, first. 

b. Add \ the flour, and beat very hard. Cover and set 
in a warm place. 

c. When the soft dough is full of holes, like a sponge, add 
the salt, shortening, and the rest of the flour. 

d. Then turn the dough upon a floured board, and knead 
until it is smooth and springy ; or mix it in a bread machine 
(Fig. 28). Kneading means folding over, pressing down, and 
turning the dough with a rocking motion. Somebody should 
show you how. 

e. There is a choice of what to do next. (1) If you wish 
a very fine-grained bread, put the dough into a greased bowl, 
wet the top with milk, cover, set away until it rises to twice 
its first size, knead again, and put into pans to rise again ; or 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 53 

(2) This is quite fine enough for everyday eating, and saves 
strength and time. After one kneading only, shape the bread 
into loaves, just large enough to half fill each pan, brush 
over with milk, and then go on as with (1) ; only when light, 
the loaves are in the pans ready for baking. If the bubbles 
in the loaves are large, prick them gently. Why ? 

Baking. The baking of bread is an art. 

It needs a steady oven, not too hot. Test it by a piece of 
paper that should turn a golden brown in 15 minutes. Some 
day, when we all have oven thermometers, we shall be baking 
our bread at 380 F. 

A loaf made of 3 cups of flour, the shape of those in the 
picture, should bake about three quarters of an hour. It is 
better to overbake than to underbake. 

The story of bread is not finished yet. Take the loaves from 
the pan to cool them. When cool all the way through, put 
the bread into a clean stone jar or tin box. Cover with clean 
paper. Some people use cloth, but paper is nicer. 

More about serving bread. Do not cut the loaf for 
twelve hours. Bread has a better texture and is more 
digestible then. Can you cut even slices ? It takes 
practice. Sometimes, when dainty sandwiches are 
wanted, cut the slices very thin. 

What are some of the ways to use bread ? Mollie 
Stark has a section of her cook book for bread re- 
cipes, with pictures of pretty loaves and rolls ; and 
she says that she may decide to have a •" Bread 
Book/' 

There is not room in this chapter for all the uses of 
bread ; but Mollie has recipes for biscuits, rolls, dry 
toast, milk toast, zwieback, French egg toast, scalloped 



54 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



dishes, desserts, and so on. Her motto is, " Bread is 
too good to throw away." 

Why use a bread machine ? Why not ! Why use 

a sewing machine, or a 
mowing machine, or a 
cultivator instead of 
a hoe ? 

Mollie Stark and 
Marjorie Allen have 
a plan for surprising 
their mothers with 
presents of bread ma- 
chines as soon as they 
themselves can save 
the money. And they have a plan, too, for earning some 
money by making bread and rolls to sell. Marjorie's 
mother has a friend who would be glad to buy bread, 
but she says that she soon tires of baker's bread. She 
asked Marjorie if she would be willing to make the 
bread for her. Of course, Marjorie and Barbara expect 
to become experts, and to make perfect bread. 





Fig. 



Courtesy of Landers, Frary and Clark. 



An inexpensive bread mixer, 
cover on and off. 




Courtesy of Department of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College, Columbia University. 

Fig. 29. — In her " Bread Book" Mollie Stark has pictures of pretty rolls. 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 55 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Should you pour boiling water on a yeast cake to dissolve 
it ? Why, or why not ? 

2. Why should the bread box be scalded out often ? 

3. Calculate the cost of a loaf of bread made with three cups 
of flour. 

4. What must you count in, if you want to compare the cost 
of a home loaf with a baker's loaf ? 

5. Can you read a thermometer ? Look in the dictionary 
to see if there is more than one kind, and what the difference is. 

6. Why can you knead a dough of white flour and stretch 
it, although corn meal dough falls apart ? If you think you do not 
know, go back to the lesson before this. 

7. Was Marjorie Allen correct when she said that her mother 
hadn't "luck" with her bread ? What should she have said ? 

8. Can you find out why dough sours sometimes ? 

9. What are the most important points to remember in mak- 
ing bread ? 

10. If your bread is light and the oven is not ready, what will 
you do with the dough ? 

11. Explain why you can put a yeastcake into the ice box 
without injuring it ? 

Lesson 7 
dishes for a school luncheon 

What else may we have for the school luncheon ? What is 
the difference between luncheon and other meals ? 

The Pleasant Valley Luncheon Club found it neces- 
sary to have a small committee each week to make 
plans for the luncheons for the coming week, in order 
that the pupils might know what each one should bring. 
The committees did not have disagreeable disputes, 



56 FOOD AND HEALTH 

although they did not always quite agree. The club 
soon learned that not all the members could have the 
food they liked best at every luncheon, and that it was 
not good sense to be what John Alden called " too 
fussy/' 

One day, when John Stark asked for plum pudding, 
and his sister, Mollie Stark, told him that he could not 
have it because plum pudding is not a luncheon dish, 
he said, " Why not ? What is luncheon ? Some of us 
call it dinner, anyway/' And what is luncheon, or 
breakfast, or dinner ; and what is a meal ? These 
questions seemed to be conundrums, although the girls 
and boys had eaten meals all their lives. So they looked 
up the words in the new, big dictionary. They became 
so much interested that they wanted to learn the words 
for meals in other languages, and they found that different 
nations have very different habits in regard to their food. 

In our own country, we usually have three meals, — 
breakfast, dinner, and supper, or tea, — or breakfast, 
luncheon, and dinner. 

What is a meal ? One dictionary says that a meal 
is " the supply of food taken at one time for the relief 
of hunger," and tells us that in the very old days of 
England, the Anglo-Saxon days, the word was spelled 
" mael," meaning a fixed time. That is very interest- 
ing ; for not only is it important to the person preparing 
the meal to have people prompt, but it is very necessary 
to us all to eat at regular hours, — babies, little children, 
and grown people, too. 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 57 

Breakfast, dinner, luncheon, supper, all are meals. 
How do they differ ? 

You have heard of light and heavy meals, have you 
not ? When Marjorie Allen told her father that Miss 
Travers said in one of her lectures that bread and milk 
and baked apples would be good for a farmer at noon of 
a hot day, he laughed, and replied that he had rather 
have a good square meal. What did he mean ? Some- 
thing like this ? Well-cooked corn beef, pickles, pota- 
toes, sweet corn, string beans, pie, cake, coffee or tea ? 
Is that a light or a heavy meal ? What name belongs 
to such a meal ? 

If the Pleasant Valley School ate a meal like that at 
recess, would Miss James find her pupils wide-awake 
and quick at arithmetic ? Who was right about the 
plum pudding, Mollie or John Stark ? Is it not true 
that you already know something about meals ; and that 
a " light " meal is one where less food is served, and 
where the food is more easily, or more quickly, digested ? 
Luncheon is a rather " light " meal ; " a slight repast," 
says the dictionary. If you have not already done so, 
look in your dictionary to find the rest of the story about 
the words lunch and luncheon. The other meals we 
will talk about as we learn about preparing them. 

A luncheon, then, is a meal rather small in quantity, 
and, in the case of the school lunch, consisting of foods 
that can be carried easily, and readily prepared. 

What may we add to our list of bread, milk, fruit 
and perhaps vegetables, cocoa or a cool fruit drink ? 



58 FOOD AND HEALTH 

What can we put into sandwiches ? We have al- 
ready spoken of bread for sandwiches, which must be 
cut of even thickness and, for the school luncheon, 
must have the crusts left on. When the crusts are 
cut off for " fancy " sandwiches, they should be saved 
for a scalloped dish of some kind. Brown bread may 
be used as well as white. 

The question at the beginning of this page can 
be answered by saying, " Almost anything eatable." 
The bread should be evenly buttered, and the material 
used, neatly put in ; and, if the sandwich is not to be 
very dry by lunch time, it should be wrapped in paper. 
If you are serving sandwiches at a fair or entertainment, 
put a damp napkin over them. 

What does sandwich mean ? " Sandwich " is 
another word with a story. An Englishman, an Earl 
of Sandwich (Sandwich being the name of a place or 
town), who did not want to stop to eat, used to have 
slices of bread with ham between, taken to him — a 
convenient way of having a simple meal. If you butter 
bread, put in it a bit of crisp lettuce or water cress, add 
slices of hard-boiled tgg or cheese, or a bit of cold meat, 
and another, piece of buttered bread, you have a little 
meal, have you not ? 

How can we prepare meat for sandwiches ? You 
do not need meat for luncheon at school ; but, if 
it is more convenient sometimes for Mother to give 
you that than anything else, a little will do no 
harm. 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 



59 




60 FOOD. AND HEALTH 

The meat should be sliced thin, or chopped and 
moistened a little, that it may be spread nicely on the 
bread. 

Eggs for the school luncheon ? Some people think 
hard-boiled eggs indigestible ; but they are really not so. 
An egg cooked hard takes somewhat longer to digest ; 
and, if we swallow it almost whole, it may not be good 
for us. Nevertheless a hard-boiled egg is a convenient 
and useful food. Sliced or chopped and seasoned 
pleasantly, we must chew egg if it is in a sand- 
wich. This is a good way to take it. The egg 
should cook in boiling water a half hour at least. 
Cut it fine, moisten with a little milk, salt it, put it 
between the bread — and you have a very palatable 
sandwich. 

Nuts for luncheon. We oTten think of nuts as some- 
thing to be eaten " for fun," as somebody says, forget- 
ting that the squirrel can thrive upon them. The 
squirrel is certainly a most lively and energetic little 
person, sometimes getting the nuts before you do. 
Yes, the nuts that you love to gather in the crisp autumn 
weather are a good food for you, provided you chew 
them as well as Squirrel does. Eat them with plain 
bread and butter at lunch time ; or chop them, mix 
them with a little sour-milk cheese, and make them 
into sandwiches. You could not ask for a better 
meal. 

We will plan for other luncheon dishes as we talk 
about other meals. 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 61 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Explain why bread, milk, and apples make a nutritious 
luncheon. 

2. Look up the words : meal, breakfast, luncheon, dinner, 
supper, tea ; and write the definitions in your cook book. 

3. Make a list of food materials that can be used in sand- 
wiches. 

4. See if you can reason out what foodstuffs an egg contains. 
Do you know why an egg colors a silver spoon ? 

5. What are some of the foodstuffs that nuts must contain ? 

Lesson 8 
a picnic luncheon 
What new can we have for a picnic luncheon ? 

The Luncheon Club asked Miss James if she would 
not go with them some pleasant Saturday for a picnic 
on the shores of a beautiful pond at the head of Pleas- 
ant Valley. 

This sheet of water had been stocked with fish by the 
farmers of the valley, who sent for advice to the Bureau 
of Fisheries at Washington. The members of the 
Farmers' Club have permission to fish at certain times 
of the year. They were very glad to allow the Lun- 
cheon Club to go fishing on a holiday morning. 

The other food for luncheon was arranged for, just 
as the club planned it on school days. The different 
members of the club carried different foods ; and all 
together they had enough bread and butter, sandwiches, 
and cookies for every one present. The boys caught 



62 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



the fish while Miss James and the girls were building 
the fire and preparing to make the cocoa in a kettle 
hung over the fire. Two or three pans had been loaned 
for frying the fish, and you may be sure that the boys 
and girls had a merry time cleaning and cooking the 
fish, and eating the luncheon. They sang their club 




Fig. 31. — The Luncheon Club at the shore. 

songs, told stories, and gathered wild flowers to carry 
home. There were very few dishes to wash because 
they used wooden plates for the fish. All the papers 
that were left were neatly buried, because the young 
people ate their luncheon on the spot where other peo- 
ple might go, and they remembered that nothing is so 
disagreeable as to see dirty papers and scraps of food 
lying about. 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 



63 




One of the 
girls said, " May 
we have a lesson 
at school on 
cooking fish, for 
there are so 
many ways that 
it can be done ?" 
The next time 
that the cooking 
class met on 
their regular day 
they studied the 
fish question. 

Here are a few 
recipes. We cannot always have fresh fish, and should 
learn to use fish salted and canned. 

Creamed codfish. 

Soak the salted fish in cold water. Pull it apart with knife 
and fork. Put it in a saucepan of cold water, allow the water 
to heat slowly, and stop the heating just before the water 
reaches the boiling point. Pour off the water, shake the sauce- 
pan over the fire, add a thin butter sauce, and reheat. Serve 
on toast, if you wish. 



Courtesy of the Department of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College. 

Fig. 32. — A dish of scalloped fish. See page 85. 
Notice how neatly the cloth is wrapped around the 
dish in which the fish is cooked. 



Baked fish. 

Almost any medium-sized fish is suitable for baking. 
Clean the fish, seeing that all scales are removed. Stuff 
and sew. Shape with skewers to form a letter S and place 
upright on a baking pan or lay the fish on its side. If the 



64 FOOD AND HEALTH 

fish is not fatty, put strips of salt pork over it, and in the pan, 
or cut gashes in the fish and lay strips of pork in them. Dredge 
with flour. Bake one hour for a three-pound fish, pouring 
the fat in the pan over it, once in a while. Serve with butter 
sauce or plain. 

The stuffing can be made of bread crumbs moistened slightly 
with water and seasoned with salt and a teaspoonful of dried 
herbs. It is not necessary, however, to use it. 

Another way of baking a fish is to put slices cut from a large 
fish, in a greased pan, covering the fish with milk and letting 
it bake slowly for about half an hour, or until the flesh loosens 
from the bones. Cover the fish during the first half of the 
cooking, and then remove the cover and sprinkle the fish with 
crumbs. If the fish is baked in an earthen dish, serve it in 
the same dish. 

Canned oysters creamed. 

Open the can and wash off the oysters in a colander or strainer. 
Make a thin butter sauce, seasoning with celery salt or celery 
leaves. When the sauce is done, heat the oysters in it for a 
minute, and serve on toast. 

Canned salmon creamed. 

Open the can, pick over the salmon, being careful to remove 
the bones. Let it air for an hour or so and serve in a hot 
sauce as you would the oysters. 

Butter sauce. 

What and how much. 

Milk, cold i cup 

Water, hot I cup 

Butter or beef fat 2 tablespoonfuls 

Flour 2 tablespoonfuls 

Pepper J teaspoonful 

Salt \ teaspoonful 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 65 

How to make. Melt the butter in a saucepan ; let it bubble 
but not burn; add the flour, salt and pepper; mix well; add all 
of the milk cold ; and stir steadily until the mixture thickens. 
Pour in the hot water slowly, stirring all the time. To keep 
sauce hot, cover and set it over hot water. 

All sauces may be made in the same way, with other liquids 
to take the place of milk, — tomato juice, for instance. Onions, 
if used, should be cut fine and browned in part of the butter 
before the flour is added. 

Fish and clam chowder. 

This can be made with fresh clams or canned clams, fresh 
fish or salt fish. If the salt fish is used, it should be soaked 
before it is put into the chowder. 

What and how much. 



Clams or fish in 


pieces 


1 quart 


Potatoes 




4 cups, cut in thick slices 


Onion 




1 chopped 


Salt 




1 tablespoonful 


Pepper 




J teaspoonful 


Butter or pork 




4 tablespoonfuls 


Milk 




6 cups, scalded 


Soda crackers 







How to make. If clams are used, clean and pick them over, 
cut ofFthe hard part, chop, and strain the clam liquor. Or if you 
are using fish, cut it into pieces. Try out a little pork in a 
large kettle and fry the onion in it. If it is a clam chowder, cook 
the potatoes first and drain. Then put into the kettle layers 
of clams, potatoes, and crackers; add the milk and butter; 
cook for three minutes ; and add the clam liquor hot. If it 
is a fish chowder, put the potatoes in raw with the fish and 
cook the chowder half an hour. With pork, omit butter. 

The Luncheon Club made this chowder at school one day in 
the fall on a fire built out of doors, for the smell of fish in the 



66 FOOD AND HEALTH 

schoolroom is not very pleasant. Of course, the canned 
salmon could be used for a luncheon dish at school, as it is 
already cooked. 

What is the value of fish as food ? Fish is one of 
the meat substitutes. People who live on the coast 
can make it their chief animal food. It costs some- 
what less than meat, at least in some places. When 
we can, we should use it at least two or three times a 
week for one meal or another. It is just about as di- 
gestible as meat, although some of the oily fish, like 
herring, mackerel, salmon, and shad, are a little more 
difficult of digestion than cod or haddock. We must 
not think of fish as a " brain food." Some people 
used to say that it was good for the brain because it 
contained phosphorus, but fish has no more phosphorus 
than some other food, and the brain has no more need 
of phosphorus than have other parts of our body. 

Having fish fresh. Fish spoils very easily. If we 
live far away from the seacoast, unless we happen to 
be near ponds or rivers, it is better for us to use canned 
or smoked fish than fish that has been kept a long time. 
It can be carried on ice, however, for a long distance. 
If you buy fish from a cart that comes to your neighbor- 
hood, notice that the flesh is firm and the eyes bright. 
Fish always has a disagreeable odor ; but, if it is spoiled 
at all, the smell is very unpleasant. 

Cooking fish. The flakes of fish fall apart very easily 
because the connective tissue softens more easily than 
the tissues of meat. When you boil fish it is best 



LUNCHEON AT SCHOOL 6 7 

to wrap it in a cloth so that it may not break and it is 
a good idea to bake it in the dish in which it will be 
served. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. As fish is a meat substitute, what important foodstuffs 
must it contain ? 

2. If there are fish in your neighborhood, make a list of the 
seasons when they are caught. If you are not near the coast, 
perhaps your teacher can help you to find this in some cook book. 

3. Make a list of the different dishes in which fish could be 
used as a substitute for meat. 



REVIEW 

1. What ideas have you for cooking a lunch at school ? 

2. Is it worth while to have fruit juices in the diet ? 

3. How may fruit juices be prepared for the school luncheon ? 

4. Is there any reason for drinking water freely many times 
a day ? 

5. It is very important that water be kept pure. Can you 
tell how water may be kept pure ? 

6. Is there any reason why one should be very careful about 
the source of his water supply ? 

7. What general directions can you give about cooking ? 

8. There are several ways to prepare cocoa. Can you suggest 
one ? 

9. Tell how to prepare two simple dishes from milk. 

10. What valuable food substance does milk contain ? 

11. Do you know why the foodstuff we call protein is so im- 
portant ? 

12. How may milk be kept pure and clean ? 

13. What are the points in good bread ? 

14. Name the foodstuffs bread contains. 



68 FOOD AND HEALTH 

15. Compare bread with other staple foods as to value and cost. 

16. What is yeast ? Can you tell why yeast is used in bread ? 

17. Give complete directions for making white bread. 

18. Just what is a meal ? 

19. What are some ways for using eggs in the school luncheon ? 

20. You gathered nuts last fall. Think of ways to use them in 
the school luncheon. 

21. Why is fish valuable as a food ? 

22. How can one know whether the fish one buys is fresh ? 

23. Give one good fish recipe that could be used in a luncheon 
prepared at school. 




CHAPTER III 

THE HOME SUPPER 

Lesson 9 
preparing supper 
How may we help in preparing supper ? 

Supper is one of the pleasantest meals of the day, 
because the hardest work is over for all, and there seems 
to be more time for the family to chat pleasantly, with- 
out a feeling of hurry. In summer the supper comes at 
the coolest hour, and in the winter there is a feeling of 
comfort in the warmth of the fire and the brightness 
of the lighted lamps. 

If a girl has not learned to prepare a meal, supper 
is a practical one for her to begin with ; it will give her 
mother a little leisure at the end of a busy day, and the 
girl herself is back from school, and glad to do something 
to help. Miss James, the teacher of the Pleasant Valley 

69 



7 o FOOD AND HEALTH 

School, gives credit for home work, as a part of the 
household arts work ; but this should not be needed to 
make an energetic girl ready for the task. Marjorie 
Allen, Mollie Stark, and the other girls were discussing 
music at one of their club meetings, for they have a chorus 
in Pleasant Valley ; and they all agreed that the time 
to play or practice upon the piano or organ is not while 
Mother is getting a meal or washing dishes. What do 
you think about it ? After you have helped with the 
work, then in the quiet of the evening, when all the 
grown people can listen and join in the music, is not that 
a better time ? 

Setting the table. This is a pretty piece of work for 
the little ones before they learn to cook. Marjorie 
Allen makes a play of the table setting for the younger 
sisters and brothers. They have a table-setting song, 
and march back and forth in time to the music. Can- 
not some one of you make a rhyme for this occasion ? 

The dining table. The table may be standing in the 
kitchen or the living room, or, if the house is large, 
there may be a separate dining room ; but this is not 
necessary, and, while it is very pleasant in many ways, 
it does make more steps. One of the houses in Pleasant 
Valley has a large old-fashioned kitchen across the back 
of the house with the cooking conveniences at one end, 
and at the other, a place for the dining table. Near the 
table is a corner cupboard that holds enough dishes for 
the table. That end of the room is cool because there 
are two doors, The oldest daughter has made a screen 



THE HOME SUPPER 



7i 



from a clotheshorse covered with a pretty chintz- 
patterned calico ; and, when the meal is ready, she 
stands the screen where it cuts off the heat of the stove. 
There could not be a pleasanter place for a meal, when 




Courtesy of Whitcomb and Barrows. 
Fig. 33. — An easy way to set an attractive table. 

Father comes in from work, and Mother is glad to rest 
a minute. 

In the Allen family, the father and brothers have a 
knack for carpentering. When farm work was slack, 



?2 FOOD AND HEALTH 

they added a piazza to the house outside the kitchen, 
screened it in ; and they have all their meals there in 
warm and pleasant weather. A shelf on each side the 
window ledge makes it easy to pass things through 
from the kitchen. Several other families in Pleasant 
Valley followed this fashion. (Fig. 75.) 

What shall we have to cover the table ? The table 
itself is probably an extension table with a smooth top. 







Fig. 34. — A table laid with doilies. The napkin should be at the left. 

A dull finish is better than a polished top, because it does 
not become spotted or scratched so easily. 

For a cover, have you ever tried white table oilcloth 
in the summer ? It looks cool, can be washed off quickly 
at the end of each meal, and saves laundry work in hot 
weather. Why should a large tablecloth be used in 
summer or, indeed, in winter ? Miss Travers, from the 
State College, advised the members of the Woman's 
Club to give them up and instead to use doilies or strips 



THE HOME SUPPER 73 

of cloth or larger cloths that just cover the table. 
Some of the members, of course, did not want to give 
up their linen in the shape of large tablecloths ; but, 
after all, is not the simplest often the most beautiful 
as well as the most labor saving ? 

Here is a picture (Fig. 35) of a table simply laid with 




Courtesy of the Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University. 
Fig. 35. — A table laid with strips of blue and white Japanese toweling. 

strips'placed across in such a way that they lie under 
each place. These happen to be made of Japanese 
toweling, with blue or brown figures, that costs only ten 
cents a yard, and is easy to wash ; but strips of plain 



74 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



toweling are pretty used in the same way, — a rather 
fine " crash," for instance. Or you may use squares 
of cloth with a simple edge, called doilies. 1 These can 
be made in sewing lessons at school, or for extra home 




Fig. 36. — A plan for laying one place. 1, plate; 2, fork; 3, knife; 4, spoons; 
5, napkin; 6, bread and butter plate; 7, glass for water. 

work. Paper napkins in the summer are a great con- 
venience ; and why not for all the year ? If cloth nap- 
kins must be used, have small ones. 

Laying the table. To have everything clean and 
fresh is the first important thing ; next, to have plates, 
spoons, and forks laid straight. The drawing (Fig. 36) 
shows a simple way of laying a place. The napkins 
should be placed at the left. Stand salt and pepper 
shakers where they are easily reached, and have mats, 

1 D'Oyley was the name of a merchant in England in the eighteenth century. 



THE HOME SUPPER 75 

straw or crocheted, where the hot dishes are to stand, 
with a tablespoon ready for helping the food. Always 
know what food is to be put on the table, and plan 
dishes accordingly. In cold weather, at least, heat the 
plates and dishes. 

Busy people sometimes leave a few of the articles on 
the table from meal to meal. If you do this, it is nec- 
essary to cover the table to keep off a stray fly ; and 
you should be careful that all crumbs are brushed off 
before the cover is put over. It is neater to clear off 
the table after every meal. 

How can we help at the table ? When we wait on 
ourselves, this should be done pleasantly and all should 
take a share, each person helping to serve one or more 
dishes. The Allen children take turns as waiter in re- 
moving the soiled dishes and the food, and in putting 
on the dessert. A quick way is to place a tray on a 
small stand near the table, taking the dishes from one 
place at a time and sorting them on the tray as you go. 
The tray can then be carried into the kitchen, with the 
dishes ready for washing. 

One mother uses a plan for having everybody help 
at breakfast time, by serving himself on a tray. 

The breakfast is kept hot on the stove. On the 
kitchen table are all the dishes needed and a small tray, 
one for each of the family of four. Even the little 
boy sets his own tray, helps himself to food, and takes 
his place at the table. When the meal is ended, each 
one carries out his own dishes. This plan might not 



7 6 FOOD AND HEALTH 

work with a large family, and some people would not 
like it. 

Mollie Stark's older brother made a turntable on a 
pivot in the center of the table and standing above it. 
All the dishes of food were placed on this, and each one 
helped himself. The table has to be round to make this 
device convenient. 

What patterns shall we choose for the table china ? 
We cannot all see beauty in the same kind of thing. 
Some of us enjoy bright colors and gay patterns. Some 
things are in good taste in certain places and not in 
others, however. Although large figures and striking 
colors may attract our attention when we are buying 
chinaware, we may become very tired of the design 
when we see it every day. It is wiser to buy dishes 
with a simple pattern and quiet color. A narrow 
border of gold or of gold and green is pretty ; and one 
does not grow tired of such a simple pattern. Notice 
the two designs on the china in the picture (Fig. 38) 
and also on the platters in the pictures of cooked food 
throughout this volume. Of course, if you are fortu- 
nate in having some old pieces of china or earthenware 
that belonged to your grandmother, perhaps, you will 
prize them and take good care of them ; and they 
make interesting ornaments for the kitchen or dining- 
room shelf. 

If you are not quite happy without gay dishes, then 
select a good pattern in some pitcher, or plate, or single 
dish, to be used once in a while. Do you know that a 



THE HOME SUPPER 77 

pretty thing interests us more if we do not see it all the 
time ? The Japanese, who have a strong artistic sense, 
have only a few beautiful objects out at one time, chang- 
ing one for another to refresh the eyes. In the picture 
(Fig. 37) you find two pitchers, good in shape and easy 




" Selection of Household Equipment:' Year Book. Department of Agriculture, 1914. 
Fig. 37. — Two pitchers, good in shape and easy to wash. 

to wash. The larger is an old-time pattern in blue. 
The other picture (Fig. 38) shows a pretty teapot of 
an antique pattern, but it is so hard to clean that it 
would better be kept as an ornament. We need to 
think of other points in our china, in addition to its 
beauty, you see. 

Flowers on the table. In a busy household and with 
a large family, perhaps we cannot always have flowers 



78 



FOOD AND HEALTH, 



on the table ; but when the first rose opens, or some 
other flower is beginning to bloom, put it in a vase in 
the middle of the table, and see if it is not enjoyed. 

Setting the table for company. Of course, the table 
should be neat and pretty for the home people, but we 





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" Selection of Household Equipment." Year Book. Department of Agriculture, 1914. 

Fig. 38. — A pretty teapot of antique pattern, but so hard to clean that it 
better be kept as an ornament. 



all like to honor our guests and to show them that we 
are glad to *have them with us. Some of the prettiest 
dishes may be used that we do not always place on the 
table ; and this is a time for a few flowers arranged in 
the center of the table. 

Some people think it necessary to serve their company 
with several kinds of cake, and preserves ; and one 
wonders sometimes if their friends may not have indi- 



THE HOME SUPPER 



79 



gestion from overeating. It is in better taste, and 
kinder, to have only one of each kind of food, each dish 
well cooked and daintily served ; otherwise, the table 
may look as if it held a food exhibit instead of a meal. 
" Gold " and " silver " cake look pretty together on 
a plate, and are not too much to serve ; but one layer 
cake is enough for any meal. 

What shall we say about table manners ? One day 
after the Girls' Club had given a luncheon to their 




Fig. 39. — Incorrect position for hold- 
ing knife and fork. 



Correct position for holding knife 
and fork. 



friends in the Ellen H. Richards house, Barbara Oakes 
said : " It seems to me that it is just as important to 
know how to use the forks and knives and spoons as 
it is to lay them straight on the table. Did you notice 
how differently people use their forks and spoons ? I 
wonder if Miss James would talk it over with us." 
Their teacher was glad to do so, and she made several 
helpful suggestions. Miss James said that the use of 
silver and dishes at the table varies in different coun- 
tries and at different periods. For instance, in old 
times in America it was considered quite proper to pour 



8o 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



the tea out into the saucer and to drink from that ; 
and knives were made with round ends because the 
knife was once used for carrying food to the mouth. 
But there are certain principles of good manners that 'we 
all can remember. Eating slowly, drinking either a 
hot or cold beverage when the mouth is empty, chew- 
ing food with the mouth closed and without making 
a noise, and, of course, not dropping food, are all de- 
tails that we should learn ; 
because otherwise we 
make ourselves disagree- 
able to other people. It 
is considered better to 
take soup from the side 
of the spoon than from 
the end. Sometimes peo- 
ple are worried as to 
whether they should hold 
the fork in the left or the right hand. Which hand 
to use really is not a matter of great importance, pro- 
vided the fork is managed nicely. The English cus- 
tom is to hold the fork in the left hand, lifting it to 
the mouth ; the French are inclined to hold the fork 
in the right hand, using it somewhat as one would a 
spoon. The important thing is to use the fork quietly 
and naturally and without spilling food. When we are 
invited to a formal luncheon or dinner, where there is 
quite an array of silver, we, of course, like to do as other 
people. The soup spoon we can easily know because it 




Fig. 40. — The fork is in the right hand 
ready to carry food to the mouth. 



THE HOME SUPPER 81 

is larger. Some people have a small fork with one broad 
tine for fish. Fish is usually supposed to be eaten with 
a fork as it does not need cutting. If there are two or 
three knives, the smallest is probably for the bread and 
butter, and the largest for cutting meat. If there are 
two forks, one smaller and one larger, the smaller is prob- 
ably for the salad and the larger for the meat dish. 
It is not worth while to be nervous and uncomfortable 
simply because the way of laying silver is not quite 
familiar. It is usually the custom to arrange silver at a 
formal affair in such a way that the outer pieces are used 
first. If you eat quietly and slowly, making as quiet 
motions as possible, your manners will be acceptable. 

Talking at the table. There is one thing that does 
more at the meal than the table setting, and almost 
more than the good food. Do you know what it is ? 
If you happen to be feeling what you call " out of sorts," 
make yourself tell an amusing story, and see what a 
flavor it adds to the supper. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Discuss together different ways of setting and waiting on 
the table. 

2. Make a list of dishes needed for a family of six or eight. 

3. Send for some price list of dishes, and calculate the cost. 

4. Make a simple plan for waiting on your home table. 

5. Make suggestions for covering the table for breakfast, for a 
simple and a formal luncheon, and for a family dinner and a dinner 
when there are guests. 

6. Make a drawing of one place laid for dinner. 

G 



82 FOOD AND HEALTH 

Lesson io 
dishes suitable for supper 
What shall we have for supper ? 

As supper comes late in the day, we want, when we 
can, to choose those foods that will need little cooking ; 
and thus we make as little work as possible. We 
have to remember, too, the time of year, for in sum- 
mer we may not want a hot dish ; whereas in winter, 
a warm supper is just what we need. 

A simple supper. If we are thinking only of the 
needs of the body, a supper of bread and milk, with 
some cooked fruit or berries, is all that is required 
in warm weather. People who are satisfied with this, 
are very sensible and fortunate. But what shall we 
give to those who want something else ? 

There will be bread and butter, of course ; something 
sweet in the way of simple cake or gingerbread or 
cookies ; fruit, either berries or cooked canned fruit ; 
cocoa or tea. Do we want meat or a substitute for it ? 
Is there some cheese in the house ? There is a cheese 
toast that will make a hot dish to take the place of meat. 
It can be cooked in a frying pan on top of an oil stove. 
This dish can be added to the list of foods prepared at 
school. 

Cheese toast. 

What. Skim milk, slices of stale bread \ inch thick, salt, 
an egg, cheese, cut thin or grated. 

How much. Enough slices for the family. 



THE HOME SUPPER 83 

Utensils. A flat dish, a frying pan, a bread knife or griddle- 
cake turner. 

How to make. Beat the egg in the dish, add the milk and 
salt. Lay in one or two slices of bread at a time until the 
slice is moist all through, but not soft. 

Have the frying pan hot and greased a little. Lay in as 
many of the slices as the pan will hold. Brown the slices on 
one side and turn to brown on the other. Sprinkle grated 
cheese on the top, or lay on thin slices. When the lower side 
is browned and the cheese melted, the toast is ready to serve. 

Another way. 

Omit the cheese, and serve the toast with a little jelly on the 
top, or with maple or brown sugar sprinkled on. 

Both of these are good in winter, as well as in summer. 

How shall we serve meat for supper ? Some people 
think that they must have meat for supper. The ques- 
tion of meat is found in another lesson farther on. If 
somebody must have it, then we will prepare it well, of 
course. 

If a solid piece of meat is left from dinner, slice it 
cold, and serve with a little mustard or pickle. 

If there is gravy left, chop the meat, and warm it in 
the gravy, but do not cook it long enough to make the 
meat hard. Make it savory by adding a little tomato, 
a bit of onion, or celery leaves, and serve it on bread or 
toast. 

What is scalloped meat ? This word " scalloped " 
is used for those cooked dishes where there are layers 
of two different food materials, first one and then the 
other, — some starchy material already cooked, like 



84 FOOD AND HEALTH 

bread crumbs, or boiled rice, or potato, with meat or 
fish or eggs or fruit. The name scalloped was given at 
first to a food that was heated in a large scallop shell 
with crumbs on top. Although we now use a dish in 
place of the shell most commonly, we keep the name. 1 

How shall we make a scalloped dish ? 

This is not the kind of dish where exact measures are 
needed. You need enough material to fill a baking dish large 
enough for your family. Use what you have on hand. Sup- 
pose you find in the pantry some pieces of cold meat, — per- 
haps of more than one kind, stale bread, stewed tomato, canned 
or fresh. Make as follows : 

a. Grease a baking dish. 

b. Cut the meat in small pieces or chop or grind it. 

c. Crumb the bread. 

d. Put a layer of crumbs in the bottom of the dish, then a 
layer of meat, and a layer of tomato. Sprinkle on a little 
salt. Put in another layer of bread and so on until the dish 
is full, having the crumbs on top. Moisten the top layer of 
crumbs with tomato juice or water, and put on it a few bits of 
butter, or a little suet, or beef fat tried out. 

e. Heat and brown in the oven. 

The dish can be made without tomato. Then water or gravy 
will be needed to moisten it. 

Meat with rice or potato. 

If there is cold boiled rice or cold mashed potato on hand, 
use either in place of the bread. Or, if the cold potatoes are 
whole, slice the potatoes, chop the meat, and make every other 
layer of those. A bit of some vegetable, onion, carrot, or tur- 

1 If you ever visit a part of the coast where the large scallop shells 
wash up on the beach, collect a set of several, and use them for warming 
up meat or fish with crumbs on top, one for each person. 



THE HOME SUPPER 



85 



nip can be mixed with the meat ; or use fish, oysters or clams, 
or hard-boiled eggs sliced, in place of the meat. As this kind 
of dish needs an oven, it is perhaps better for that reason in 
winter than in summer, unless for some cool day when there 
is a fire, — or if there is an oven to the oil stove. 

Some other supper dishes. The main dish for supper 
that has meat in it, or something to take the place of 
meat, can be a warmed-over dish, you see. 

The baked-bean loaf is a very good substitute for 
meat. 




Courtesy of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. 
Fig. 41. — Baked-bean loaf. 



Baked-bean loaf. 

What and how much. 

1 pint cold baked beans 
1 egg, beaten 
1 cupful bread crumbs 
Salt and pepper 



1 tablespoonful finely 
minced onion 

2 tablespoonfuls tomato 

catsup 



86 FOOD AND HEALTH 

How to make. Combine the ingredients, and shape the 
mixture into a loaf. Bake it for twenty-five minutes. Serve 
with strips of broiled bacon on the top. 

With baked beans, one likes Boston brown bread. 

Boston brown bread. 

What and how much. 

Corn meal i? cup 

Rye or Graham 2 cups 

Salt 1 teaspoonful 

Soda 1 teaspoonful 

Molasses 1 cup 

Thick sour milk 2 cups 

Butter (melted) 2 tablespoonfuls 

How to make. Mix in the order given, stirring the molasses 
and milk together first. Put the mixture in a greased pail, 
cover tightly, and put the pail in a kettle of water to boil 3 
to 5 hours. 

In winter, a stew of clams or oysters made with milk 
is a comfortable or, as some one has said, a " com- 
forting " dish. These are not found fresh near Pleasant 
Valley, but canned oysters or clams are safe if they are 
put up in a good cannery. 

Marjorie Allen tried making a milk or cream vege- 
table soup one cold winter evening, and the family en- 
joyed it thoroughly. (See page 231.) 

We seem, in selecting the main supper dish, to be 
searching for something that satisfies the appetite, is 
nutritious, and does not make much work at supper 
time. 



THE HOME SUPPER 87 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Explain why the cheese toast takes the place of meat. 

2. Why is it just as well to use skim as whole milk in this dish ? 

3 . Make out several plans for summer suppers and winter suppers. 

4. Make a list of other dishes that are good for supper. 

Lesson ii 

other supper dishes 

A salad is a palatable supper dish. What is the best way to 
make tea ? 

Marjorie Allen often makes a potato salad, one of 
her father's favorite dishes, and varies it by using other 
cold vegetables and adding cold meat or fowl. 

What is a salad ? The word " salad " is supposed to be 
derived from the Latin "sal," salt. We use the term 
for a dish that gives relish to a meal by the crispness of 
fresh lettuce, celery, a shredded cabbage, or some other 
green vegetable. These may be combined with cold 
cooked vegetables, meat, fish, shellfish, fresh fruit, or 
nuts, and served with a dressing. Lettuce eaten with 
lemon juice or vinegar and sugar is a simple old- 
fashioned salad. Some people enjoy the lettuce dressed 
with olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper. A cooked 
dressing made with butter or cream is relished by those 
who do not like the flavor of olive oil. 

Green vegetables should be freshened in cold water, 
dried by shaking in a towel, and cooled. Cooked vege- 
tables and meats should be cut in small pieces, and 
chilled. Fruit should be kept on ice and prepared just 
before serving. 



88 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



Potato salad. 

What and how much. 
Potato cubes 
Minced parsley 
Chopped onion 
Salt 
Pepper 
Dressing to moisten 



i pint 

i tablespoonful 

i teaspoonful 




Courtesy o] Department of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College, Columbia University. 

Fig. 42. — Potato salad. 

For variety add one of the following to the potatoes : 

Minced ham \ cup 

Nuts, cut fine § cup 

Cucumbers, sliced or cubed § cup 

Celery, in \ in. lengths 1 cup 

Boiled dressing. 

What and how much. 

Eggs 2 

Mustard \ teaspoonful 

Salt \ teaspoonful 

Sugar I teaspoonful 



THE HOME SUPPER 



89 



Vinegar or lemon juice 

Hot water 

Butter 

A few grains of cayenne 



3 teaspoonfuls 

i cup 

1 tablespoonful 



How to make. Mix the dry materials and beat with the 
eggs until light. Add the vinegar and water and cook in a 
double boiler, stirring constantly until thick and smooth. 
Remove from the fire, stir in the butter, and set away to 
cool. 




Courtesy 0/ Department of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College, Columbia University. 
Fig. 43. — Tomato jelly salad. 



Tomato jelly salad. 

What and how much. 
Tomato pulp 

(cooked and strained) 
Water 
Gelatin 
Salt, pepper, and sugar to taste. 



2 cups 

2 tablespoonfuls 

1 \ tablespoonfuls 



For method of making, see recipe for gelatin on page 237. 
Serve with boiled or cream dressing. 



9 o 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



Whipped cream dressing. 

What and how much. 
Thick cream, sweet or sour J cup 

Vinegar 2 tablespoonfuls or less 

Salt i tablespoonful 

Sugar \ tablespoonful 

White pepper 

How to make. Beat cream stiff with Dover beater; add 
salt, sugar, pepper, and vinegar very slowly, still beating. 
Serve with fresh cabbage and garnish the salad with slices 
of green pepper. This dressing may be used with any other 
salad. 

How to make tea. There are very few families who 
do not require tea. We need to learn to make it well, 
although only the grown people should drink it. 

Is it not curious that among the thousands of plants 
in the world, the human race has found only a few to 
use for making a beverage ? Tea has been used in 
China for hundreds of years ; and the tea plant grows well 
there, and in Japan, India, and Ceylon. You may 
have heard of one plantation in South Carolina where 
very good flavored tea is grown ; but the climate and 
soil of these other countries seem best to suit the tea 
plant. The leaves are gathered, dried, and rolled. The 
color and flavor of the tea depend upon the age of the 
leaf and the way in which it is dried, as well as upon 
the soil and climate. 

Your family has some particular liking for some one 
kind of tea, — Oolong, a Chinese tea, Japan tea, Ceylon, 
or India, these latter having several " fancy " names. 



THE HOME SUPPER 91 

Perhaps you use a " mixed " tea, which means a mixture 
of green and black tea, probably Chinese varieties. 

What does tea contain ? All these teas contain 
" theine," which is the substance that acts upon the 
nerves, making some people feel comfortable, bright, 
and talkative, and keeping others awake. But it is 
another substance in tea, tannin or tannic acid, which 
is bad for the digestion. The longer tea stands, espe- 
cially if it boils, the more of this substance is taken out 
by the water. Miss James told the class that when 
one sees the teapot on the back of the stove all day, and 
somebody drinking tea from the pot, then somewhere 
in the house one will find a bottle of medicine for indi- 
gestion ! It is better, too, to take tea at a meal when 
there is little or no meat. When Agnes Groves repeated 
this at home, her aunt, who was a great tea drinker 
and liked strong tea thoroughly boiled, said that she 
would like to have Agnes prepare tea correctly. The 
doctor had told her that she drank it too often and too 
strong. So Agnes made the tea for supper that night, 
explaining that if the water is poured on when it is boil- 
ing, and is allowed to stand upon the leaves only a few 
minutes, the flavor is drawn out, but much less of the 
tannin. Never boil the tea leaves in the water. 

Making tea. 

How much. 1 teaspoonful tea for each person, and 1 for 
the pot ; and about 1 cup of water to each teaspoonful of tea. 
Utensils. An earthen pot, measuring cup, teaspoon, strainer. 
Sometimes a tea ball or piece of cheesecloth. 



92 FOOD AND HEALTH 

How to make. Measure the water and bring it to the boiling 
point. Heat the tea slightly in the pot, pour on the water 
rapidly, allow to stand three to five minutes, strain into a 
heated pot for serving. If there is an astringent flavor, the 
tea has stood too long. 

Where tea is to be served in very large quantities, this 
method is convenient : Make a small quantity of very strong 
tea, pour it off the leaves, and add boiling water when it is 
served. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. What is the most important thing to remember in making 
tea ? 

2. Why should young people avoid tea drinking ? 

3. Make a list of materials that can be put into a salad. 

4. Study a cook book for other salad recipes. 

5. Make a recipe for using sour-milk cheese in a salad. How 
could you make this a very pretty dish ? Can you "guess" why 
Marjorie Allen calls this "bird's egg salad" ? 

Lesson 12 
the canning of fruit and vegetables 

We may have fresh fruit and berries and sometimes vegetables 
for supper in summer and autumn ; but in winter and spring we 
depend upon canned and dried foods. What preserving can a 
girl do at home and at school ? 

An old-fashioned economy is storing away food when 
it is plenty for time of need. We have read of the early 
days in our own country, when the first settlers dried 
corn, apples, berries, salted codfish, smoked or salted 
beef, and made fruit preserves and pickles. Some of 




93 



94 FOOD AND HEALTH 

you may have seen the old " smokehouse/' or perhaps 
some one has pointed out to you the hooks in the beams 
of some old kitchen where food was hung to dry. You 
are fortunate if the smokehouse is still in use on your 
home farm. 

Nowadays we have many conveniences for canning 
and preserving ; and our canneries all through the 
United States preserve many kinds of food in tins and 
glass. This industry still has a place in the home ; 
and, as there are many fruits and vegetables to be pre- 
served in the autumn, some of the first cooking lessons 
at the Pleasant Valley School were canning lessons. 

A word about canning clubs. Mollie Stark had read 
in the local paper an account of a girls' canning club, 
and asked Miss Travers how such a club could be 
formed. You yourself can find out all about it in the 
pamphlets mentioned on page 296. 

In the meantime, if it is not best to have a club in 
your own neighborhood, you all want to know how to 
preserve food for home use. And any businesslike girl 
can earn a little money by selling her products near 
home, if she will take the trouble. 

Why does food spoil ? Have you ever wondered why 
so many kinds of food spoil so easily, except a few that 
are dry like flour and meal and cereals ; and even these 
sometimes have insects in them, or become musty ? 
Recall what you have seen : the mold on fruit and on 
preserves or jelly ; the " working " of canned fruit which 
we have already learned is caused by the presence of 



THE HOME SUPPER 



95 



yeast. Not only do the molds and yeast cause the 
spoiling, but so do the still tinier organisms known as 




Buchanan's Household Bacteriology. 
Fig. 45. — Three species of mold as seen under a powerful microscope. 

bacteria. Do not allow these pictures (Figs. 45 and 
46) to deceive you. One of these cells may be only 
25000 of an inch in length, and some of the larger 6 * . 



A 





Buchanan's Household Bacteriology. 



Fig. 46. — The four types of bacterial cells as seen under a powerful microscope. 
A, cocci; B, bacilli; C, spirilla; D, branched filamentous organism. 

It is beyond our power to imagine them. How wonder- 
ful it is that we can actually see them through a micro- 
scope. Sometimes one, sometimes all three together, — 



96 FOOD AND HEALTH 

molds, yeast, and bacteria, — make all our trouble. 
How curious it is that because of them we have canner- 
ies and spend so much time and money in fighting them 
away from our food ! 

How do we fight them ? By killing them and by 
keeping them out of the food. How do we kill them ? 




Courtesy of Department of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College, Columbia University. 

Fig. 47. — Pint jars as well as quart jars, and jars with large mouths, are con- 
venient for canning. 

By boiling at temperature ioo° Centigrade, or 212 
Fahrenheit. And how do we keep them out ? By 
sealing cans, by covering glasses, and in another way. 
Why is it that dried, and salted, and smoked, and sug- 
ared food, like candied fruit and vinegar pickles, keep ? 
The tiny cells cannot live without moisture, and that 
accounts for drying as one way of preserving ; and 



THE HOME SUPPER 97 

they cannot live where the substances just named are 
found, and, therefore, we put these materials into the 
food. Perhaps you can think of some other materials 
in addition to these. Sometimes chemicals are used to 
preserve food, but when any proves harmful, this will 
be controlled by pure food laws. 

While the yeast cell flourishes in sugar, a large amount 
prevents its growth. The action of yeast is called fer- 
mentation. While alcohol and vinegar result from fer- 
mentation, they both, when strong enough, prevent 
the growth of the tiny living cells that cause fermenta- 
tion and decay. 

Preserving fruits. Notice the picture (Fig. 47) of jars 
and glasses for home use. Jars with large mouths are 
convenient, for large fruit or ears of corn can easily 
be put in and taken out. It is a good plan to use some 
pint jars, unless the family can eat a quart of stewed 
fruit at one meal. 

Apparatus. 

Scales 

Quart measure 

A preserving kettle of good enamel ware 

Plated knives 

Large spoon of enamel or wood 

Tablespoon and table fork 

Pint and quart cans with glass tops fastened by springs 

New rubber rings 

Jelly glasses with covers 

Cloth jelly bag 

Stick on which to hang the bag 



98 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



Large bowl 

Boiler, in which to stand the cans 

A funnel 

A dipper 

Old towels, or cheap cloths 

Saucer and spoon for testing 

Directions for work. 

Thoroughly wash all 
the utensils just before 
using. Sterilize the 
cans and glasses by- 
placing them in a large 
kettle or boiler on the 



stove, covering them 
with cold water, and 
allowing the water to 
reach the boiling point 
and to boil for half, an 
hour. Covers and rub- 
ber rings should be 
treated in the same way. 

Prepare the fruit by 
careful washing, picking 
over, paring, and cutting. 

The skins may be 
loosened on peaches and 
tomatoes by pouring hot 
water over them. 

Weigh both fruit and 
sugar, or measure if no 
scales are available. 
See that the cooking apparatus is in good order, that the 
proper heat may be continued. 




Courtesy of New York State College of Agriculttire at 
Cornell University . 

Fig. 48. — A steam cooker may be a part 
of the canning apparatus. 



THE HOME SUPPER 



99 



Avoid rapid boiling of the fruit. 

Place the cans, when they are to be filled with hot fruit, 
upon a towel wet in very hot wa- 
ter or in a pan holding an inch or 
so of hot water. Never hold the 
can or glass in the hand. 

Use a dipper for putting cooked 
fruit into the can. A funnel is 
useful placed in the mouth of the 
jar. 

Put whole fruit and halves com- 
pactly in the jar, using tablespoon 
and fork, or two tablespoons. It 
requires practice to do this well. 

See that all air bubbles are re- 
moved, and fill the cans to overflowing, before putting on the 
glass tops and fastening on the spring. Wipe off the jars 



S V || 


/// 


17! 


w*. i 


/ 




\ 


/?■/ 


m 


^S^ 


1 




.M 


TSfrl 


1 t 


Nflk IH /J/ j 





Courtesy of New York State College of 
Agriculture at Cornell University. 

Fig. 49. — A sterilizer with a 
rack may be used for steriliz- 
ing cans and glasses. 






Courtesy of New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. 
Fig^ 50. — Spring top jar. Position of spring dur- Position of spring after 

ing cooking. cooking. 

carefully, and stand them on their tops for a day in order to 
test the tightness of the rubbers and the fastening. 

After filling jelly glasses, set them at one side, and cover 
them all with a piece of cheesecloth until the jelly becomes 
firm. Then pour melted paraffin upon the jelly in each glass, 
and when the paraffin is cooled, put the covers on firmly. 

Label the jars with the name of the fruit and the date. 



IOO 



FOOD AND HEALTH 




Canning. 

Method i. (Material cooked before it is put into the can.) 
This is a good method for berries, and for fruit that will be 
served as a sauce. Proceed in the preparation and finishing 
according to the general directions. 
Cook the fruit gently for half an hour. 
Use as little water as possible. No 
sugar is required in the canning pro- 
cess, but the flavor is better if a small 
amount is used in the beginning — a 
half cup of sugar to a pound of fruit is 
enough. 

Method 2. (Material cooked in the 
can.) This is the better method for 
whole fruit and halves. Select firm, 
well-shaped fruit for this method, re- 
jecting the mellow and soft fruit. Pack 
the cans tightly with the fruit, and pour 
in hot water with sugar dissolved in it, 
a half cup to the quart can. More 
sugar can be used, if so desired. Set 
the jars in a boiler on a rack, and 
surround them with warm water, 

to a height that will not allow the water to boil into the 
cans. 

Set the cover on each jar, but do not fasten them. Cover 
the boiler closely, bring the water to a boil, and allow it to 
boil for an hour. At the end of this time, with a fork test 
the fruit for tenderness ; pour in more sirup if it is necessary. 
Remove the jars when the water has cooled sufficiently, and 
adjust the covers. Cold water is sometimes used at the be- 
ginning, but this makes the process longer. 

Apparatus is constructed for this method of canning, but 
the ordinary boiler answers the purpose. 



Courtesy of New York State 
College of Agriculture at Cor- 
nell University. 

Fig. 51. — Testing the 
tightness of the rubbers 
and the fastenings, af- 
ter the jars have been 
filled and have stood on 
their tops for a day. 



THE HOME SUPPER 101 

Preserving. 

(A good method for peaches, apricots, and quinces.) Select 
firm and handsome fruit and prepare it carefully. Allow a 
pound of sugar to a pound of fruit. (What is the measure of a 
pound of sugar ?) Place enough water in the kettle to cover 
the fruit, dissolve the sugar in the water, put the fruit into the 
kettle, and cook very gently until the fruit becomes a clear 
color. Rapid boiling spoils the shape of the fruit. Do not 
stir at all, but skim off any scum that rises to the top. When 
the fruit is done, put it with great care into the jars. If the 
sirup is thin, boil it down for a short time, and then fill the jar. 
Close the jar as in canning. 

Making jam and fruit butter. 

This is economical and very easy. It is nothing more than 
a fruit sauce, with a larger amount of sugar than usual to 
preserve it. 

Soft and somewhat imperfect fruit may be used. For jam 
proper allow a pint of sugar to a pound of fruit. Cook the 
fruit with enough water to prevent its sticking to the kettle, 
using as little as possible. 

Mash the fruit by stirring it once in a while as it cooks. 
When the fruit is soft, add the sugar, stir thoroughly, and cook 
gently for about five minutes. Test by cooling a spoonful on a 
saucer. The jam should thicken slightly. When ready, 
pour it into jelly glasses, or somewhat larger earthen jars — 
"jam pots." Seal, as directed for jelly. 

The fruit butter is even more like fruit sauce than is the jam, 
for it is softer than jam arr'd contains less sugar. A cup or 
only a half cup of sugar to the pound of fruit is enough. Pro- 
ceed exactly as in jam making. 

Apple butter may be flavored with spices and with ginger root 
and lemon juice. Quinces or a slice of pineapple may be 
cooked with the apples. 



io2 FOOD AND HEALTH 

Jelly making. 

Fruit contains a substance known as pectin, one of the car- 
bohydrates, that jellies the fruit juice when the water in the 
juice is partially evaporated. Sugar helps in jellying, but no 
amount of sugar will set the jelly if there is no pectin. Some 
fruits have more than others, and also more when not overripe. 
Currants and firm apples are good jelly makers, and can be 
mixed with other fruits that do not jelly well. Mellow sum- 
mer apples do not set well, but crab apples do. Some one is 
experimenting with the use of the white layer of orange peel 
cooked with the fruit to help the setting of the jelly, and it 
seems to be working well. (See recipes on page 302.) 

There is another step in this process, the straining out of the 
juice from the pulp. For this, prepare a jelly bag from firm 
cotton cloth which has been boiled and washed. This bag 
must be hung in such a way that the juice drops from the point 
of the bag into a bowl below. It may be hung upon a stick 
between two chairs, or upon the rod of a strong towel rack 
over a table. 

1. Apple jelly. Select tart, red-skinned apples, cut them in 
small pieces with the skins on, retain the cores, and put them in 
a kettle with cold water barely to cover. . When thoroughly 
cooked and mashed, put this pulp into the jelly bag, and allow 
the juice to drip as long as it will. Do not squeeze the bag, 
nor stir the pulp, if you wish clear jelly. This dripping process 
is a matter of hours, and in the home kitchen may continue all 
night. Allow a pint of sugar or less to a pint of juice. Return 
the juice to the kettle, and allow it to simmer for twenty-five 
minutes or half an hour, skimming when necessary. In the 
meantime, heat the sugar, being careful not to melt or burn it. 
Stir the sugar gently into the juice, and boil five minutes. 
Test a little upon a saucer. It should show signs of jellying 
as it cools. Boil longer, if necessary. Finish as directed. 
Jelly often does not set until twenty-four hours have elapsed. 



THE HOME SUPPER 



103 



2. Currant jelly. The method is the same as with apple 
jelly. It is not necessary to remove the currants from the 
stem. Heat just long enough before the straining to make the 
juices flow well. It seems odd that white currants should 
make a red jelly. 1 

Very agreeable flavors are secured by the combining of two 
or more fruits in a jelly, — quince and pineapple with apple, — 
a leaf of rose geranium or lemon verbena in a glass of apple 
jelly, — raspberry with currant. White apple jelly may be 
flavored with mint leaves, and used in place of mint sauce with 
meat. 

3. Blueberry jelly. Mention should be made of blueberry 
jelly — certainly not a common jelly. Examination of the 
blueberry shows a pulp rich in pectin. Although the juice 
is fairly sweet to taste, yet it is sufficiently acid to yield jelly 
of good firmness even when the proportion of sugar to juice is 
1:1. With this proportion of sugar, the total time of making 
the jelly need not exceed 10 minutes. 

The blueberry as a jelly fruit seems quite equal to the currant, 
with this difference in the jellies : although each is delicious, 
currant jelly is tart to the taste, while blueberry jelly is sweet. 
Hence, they may be used for different purposes in the menu. 

Pickling. 

Pickles are not desirable in the diet. If acid is craved, it is 
much wiser to secure it from fresh fruits and from lemon juice. 
If a relish is wanted, here is a simple one : 

Chili sauce. 

What and how much. 

Tomatoes 12, medium-sized and ripe 

Green pepper 1, finely chopped 

Vinegar 2 cups 

1 Adapted from Principles of Jelly Making, Cornell Reading Course, 
N. E. Goldwaithe. 



io4 FOOD AND HEALTH 



Sugar 


3 tablespoonfuls 


Salt 


i tablespoonful 


Clove 


2 teaspoonfuls 


Cinnamon 


2 teaspoonfuls 


Allspice 


2 teaspoonfuls 


Nutmeg 


2 teaspoonfuls 



How to make. Peel tomatoes and slice into a preserving 
kettle. Add other ingredients and heat to the boiling point. 
Cook slowly two and one half hours. Pour into preserve jars 
and seal. 

Tomato catsup. 

Select only ripe tomatoes for catsup, wash but do not peel, 
cut out green cores and bad places, quarter, measure, and place 
in open-top, porcelain-lined or agate vessel over stove. For 
every gallon of tomatoes add I level cup of finely chopped 
onion. Boil until both tomato and onion are soft. Strain 
juice and pulp through a coarse wire sieve, mashing through 
all the pulp possible. Measure this strained pulp and juice, 
and proceed as in the following recipe : 

2 gallons strained mixture tomatoes and onions 
2\ level teaspoonfuls ground cloves 

3 level teaspoonfuls ground ginger 

2 level teaspoonfuls ground red pepper 

3 level teaspoonfuls ground cinnamon 
2 level tablespoonfuls ground allspice 

i level" tablespoonful ground black pepper 
\\ level cups (| pint cups) sugar 
| level cup (| pint cups) salt 
I quart vinegar 

Place strained tomatoes in agate vessel ; add spices, sugar, 
and salt; boil until thick; then add hot vinegar slowly and 
let boil 30 minutes before beginning to bottle mixture. 



THE HOME SUPPER 105 

Use clear, flint, 10-ounce grape-juice bottle. Wash well with 
soda and place in vessel of hot water until you are ready to 
use. It is best to put wooden slats in the bottom of vessel ; 
place the bottles filled with water thereon ; and let come to a 
boil, thus sterilizing. Pour out water. Fill hot bottles with 
boiling catsup ; cork tightly. 

The measures for all recipes must be taken level. Scrape 
off spoons with a knife, patting and scraping until measure is 
level. These have been taken accurately, and you should get 
good results if directions are followed. 

A good catsup can be made in winter by using five cans of 
club tomatoes, 1 cup of chopped onions, and half the quan- 
tity of all other ingredients mentioned in the above recipe. 1 

Why should we dry fruit and vegetables ? This is 
an old-time method, and still a good one. It is easy ; 
a little can be done at a time ; the dried food keeps well 
in a dry place, and has a good flavor. 

Dry pitted cherries on a plate, near the fire or in the 
oven when the fire is going out. Do berries in this 
way, too. 

Sliced apples can be dried in the sun, covered with 
netting or wire screening to keep out flies. 

Many people do not know that dried sweet corn is 
quite as good as or better than canned corn. Cut off 
the kernels from the cob and dry, while the sweet corn 
is quite tender. In the winter make " succotash/' the 
Indian name for "corn and beans," or "beans and corn." 

More about the canning clubs. Here are some 

1 Courtesy of Mrs. Jane S. McKimmon, State Agent in Home Demon- 
stration Work, North Carolina. 



io6 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



recipes for canning vegetables, used in the club work. 
Vegetables need longer cooking than fruit ; and it is a 
good plan to cook them for two or three days in succes- 
sion, two or three hours at a time. 

The picture (Fig. 44) shows a large canner that is 
used out of doors. Even if there is no canning club in a 




Courtesy of New York State College of Agri- 
culture at Cornell University. 

Fig. 52. — A tin can may be 
capped with round capping steel. 




Courtesy of New Yort State 
College of Agriculture at Cornell 
University. 

Fig. 53. — A tin can 
may also be tipped 
with soldering iron and 
solder. 



town, such a, canner is very convenient when preserving 
for a large family, and it soon pays for the first cost. 

Some one asked Miss Travers whether it paid to can. 
Would it not be better to buy canned goods I Her 
answer was that where there is a plenty of fruit and vege- 
tables on the place, it costs less money to can. When 
you have learned how, the labor is not too great. 



THE HOME SUPPER 107 

Canning vegetables. 1 

To can string beans select beans that are young and tender, 
and have few strings. The Green Pod Stringless is a good 
variety. The trade likes a green bean about the size of a rat tail. 
Indeed, canners sometimes designate them as rat-tail beans. 
And if you pull it when it is young and tender enough and re- 
move every vestige of string, there is no doubt of a market. 
Snap the bean at both ends, string, and put in the wire basket 
of your canner or in a thin cotton bag, and plunge in boiling 
water for 5 minutes. This removes certain acids and makes 
the flavor of your beans better. Never forget this when can- 
ning beans. Remove after the given time, pack tightly in 
sterilized cans within \ inch of top, and fill with hot water. 
Add 1 level teaspoonful of salt, seal, exhaust for 5^minutes, tip, 
and return to the canner for 1 hour's boiling. 

For No. 10 cans use 1 level tablespoon of salt, exhaust 10 
minutes, and boil 2 hours and 20 minutes. Turn cans over 
once or twice while processing. 

Corn, butter beans, peas, squash, and some other vegetables 
require three days' cooking and are all best when cooked in 
smaller cans and jars. No. 2 is good. 

Select corn when' young and very tender ; cut from cob with 
sharp knife, gently scraping cob. Use sugar corn for canning. 
If this cannot be procured, take field corn, but be sure it is very 
tender. Do not prepare any more corn than you can imme- 
diately, as it quickly sours and you may lose your can. Pack 
in No. 2 cans only — do not use larger cans for corn — to 
within \ inch of top ; fill with cold water; add 1 level teaspoon 
of sa^t and 2 level teaspoons of sugar ; seal but do not tip ; 
allow it to exhaust 15 minutes. Tip the little hole with a 
drop of solder; return to the boiling water and boil for 1 
hour. Remove from fire and set aside for 24 hours. 

1 A timetable will be found on page 296. 



108 FOOD AND HEALTH 

After the water is boiling in your canner the second day, 
place your cans in for a second boiling I hour in length, remove, 
set aside for 24 hours, and boil again 1 hour on the third day. 

This is the only sure method of keeping corn. Never use 
any acids or preserving powders. 

Butterbeans, peas, okra, and soup vegetables are canned in 
the same manner. Add 1 level teaspoon of salt to butterbeans, 
peas, okra, and soup ; and 2 level teaspoons of sugar to peas. 

After a can of fruit or vegetables is removed from the 
canner, it should be cooled as quickly as possible. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Examine mold through a good magnifying glass, and see 
if it looks at all like the picture. 

2. Why is a rubber ring used under the cover of the can ? 

3. Explain why candied fruit does not spoil. 

4. Why do figs and dates keep ? 

5. Why does the boiling temperature help to preserve food ? 

6. Look up the meaning of the word " sterilize." 

Lesson 13 

VALUE OF FRUIT IN A DIET 

We often think of fruit as a pleasant thing to eat ; but we do 
not realize that it is a food needed to keep the body in health, and 
that we should use it every day. In what other ways may fruit 
be prepared for serving ? 

At one of Miss Travers' lectures before a Farmers' 
Institute, one man who owned a large apple orchard 
and sold many barrels of apples, said to her that he had 
thought people ate apples because they liked them, and 
that it was news to him that fruit is food. 



THE HOME SUPPER 109 

Indeed, we do like fruit, and we may be glad that so 
many kinds grow in our own country. When the early 
settlers began to clear and burn over the land, how 
happy they must have been to find blueberries and 
huckleberries and blackberries growing wild for them to 
gather ! What do you suppose the children said when 
they saw their first wild strawberries and checkerberries 
in the new land ? They found, too, the cranberries in 
the bogs and the wild red plum on the sandy beaches of 
the coast. Perhaps in your own home country, wild 
fruit grows now for you to gather. 

Have you ever heard of Johnny Appleseed ? He 
traveled through the forests and over the plains, so the 
story goes, planting apple seeds wherever he went, and 
warning the settlements of the coming of unfriendly 
Indians. Many people who never heard his name have 
wondered, perhaps, at finding apple trees in unexpected 
places. Do you know what the word " benefactor" 
means ? — A blessing maker. Do you not think that 
Johnny Appleseed was a benefactor ? 

Planting fruit trees. You are all benefactors if you 
celebrate Arbor Day, as they do at the Pleasant Valley 
School, by setting out a shade tree somewhere near the 
schoolhouse every year. But let us have more than one 
tree day, and set out fruit bushes and trees for home use. 
They do not cost very much ; and there are pamphlets 
and books that tell you what kinds to buy, and how to 
set them out and care for them. The ground can be 
enriched with wood ashes and with fertilizer from the 



no FOOD AND HEALTH 

barn and henhouse. Fruit trees and bushes will more 
than repay what they cost, on account of the value of 
the fruit in the diet. 

More about the value of fruit. We have talked about 
this in the first lesson on fruit drinks, but it is worth 
while to study the fruit question again. Have you 
heard the rhyme : 

"An apple a day, 
Keeps the doctor away" ? 

This is too much to claim for one apple, but the 
rhyme is worth remembering because it keeps the 

importance of fruit before 

APPLE 

edible portion our minds. 

What fruit contains. Al- 

Wate^.6^mjj|^^ though fruits are largely 

llllx Protein:0.4 & , 

made up of water, they con- 

■Fat;0.5 • i» 1 

tain sugar, a very little pro- 
Carbohydrates: 14.2 ^Ash:0.3 ^j^ an( j SQ y in \ e f at t h at ft 

v F a u l e ue: J ] 29 P?R C P A o L u° N r is not important. The min- 
Fig. 54- -The composition of the eral matter is the treasure in 

apple makes it a valuable fruit in fruit, including iron, phos- 
thediet. 1 it • 

phorus, lime, magnesia, pot- 
ash, in forms that the body can use. The fruit acids, 
especially in a meat diet, do away with the need 
of medicine. Fruit is so valuable in the diet that 

United States Department of Agriculture. Office of Experiment 
Stations, A. C. True, Director. Chart prepared by C. F. Langworthy, 
Expert in charge of Nutrition Investigations. 




THE HOME SUPPER in 

you should make Fruit every day one of your home 
mottoes. 

Why does fruit sometimes disagree with us ? If we eat 
too much unripe fruit or if the fruit is not fresh, it may 
not agree with us. Cooked fruit can be taken by some 
people who cannot eat it raw, because the cooking softens 
the fruit and kills bacteria that might cause some trouble. 
Cooked fruit is better for little children than raw fruit. 

Fruit juice again. Clear fruit juice squeezed from the 
pulp — orange juice, for instance — is given to very 
young children, who ought not to eat the pulp, and to 
invalids sometimes. 

How shall we prepare fresh fruit for the table ? 
Large fruit should be washed, pared, or peeled with clean 
hands. Slice it, sprinkle with sugar just before eating, 
and serve it as cool as you can make it. You have used 
bananas, oranges, and peaches in this way. Try mellow 
apples and pears, and serve with milk or cream and 
sugar. Berries should be picked over and washed, 
and served in the same way as sliced fruit. 

How shall we cook fruit ? We have said very little 
as yet about the effect of cooking on our foods. Com- 
pare a baked apple with a raw apple, and describe the 
changes. With your eye you see a change in color. 
You can easily cut the baked apple with a spoon ; but 
you need a knife for the raw apple. The cooking, then, 
has softened the skin and the fiber of the apple. Taste 
the apple. Even if it has been cooked without sugar, 
you will find that it has a new flavor. 



ii2 FOOD AND HEALTH 

The cooking of fruit on the fire goes on with the work 
of the sun in ripening fruit on the tree. The difference 
between cooked and raw ripe fruit is somewhat like the 
difference between ripe and green fruit. Can you see 
how ? Heat does work miracles. Have you ever heard 
the true " fairy " story, that all our heat comes from the 
sun ? So, when we " bake " fruit, we are really putting 
it where it becomes a little riper with the heat of the 
sun, are we not ? 

One other thing that the heat accomplishes, we have 
learned in the lesson on canning. Now you can tell 
quite a story in your notebook about heat and an apple, 
illustrated with the picture of a fine, smooth fruit. 

Stewing and baking fruit. You have seen apple 
sauce and baked apples at home, and perhaps have pre- 
pared both yourself. Miss James asked her cooking 
class to describe nice ways of cooking apples and other 
fruit used at home, and to see what they could find in 
cook books. These are some of the suggestions. 

Mollie Stark's grandmother told her about cooking 
fruit slowly for a long time in an old-fashioned brick 
oven (see Frontispiece), making a clear, dark red apple 
sauce. " The longer and the slower, the better," she 
said ; and Mollie's grandmother was quite right. 
You have not a brick oven, but you can slice apples 
into an earthen pot, add a very little water and sugar, 
cover and cook when the fire is low. You will find 
the apple sauce delicious. 

One of the girls described tart (slightly sour) apples 



THE HOME SUPPER 113 

baked with the cores taken out, and with sugar and a 
tiny bit of butter and cinnamon in each hole. That 
suggested something else to put in the hole, — a little jelly 
or a few seeded raisins. When the apples are imperfect, 
cut them in two, crosswise, for baking. Cut out the core, 
and in its place put the tiny bit of butter and sugar and 
the spice, a raisin that has been soaked, or a canned 
cherry. This is a very pretty way to serve baked 
apples. 

Marjorie Allen reported that her father was fond of 
baked pears, cooked very slowly in the oven. Miss 
James said that it is best always to use as little water 
as possible, and to learn to like the cooked fruit with 
only a small amount of extra sugar. 

Cranberry sauce or jelly. Cranberries are delicious 
stewed with a little sugar ; but, if you want a mold of 
jelly for the Thanksgiving dinner, stew them with a 
little water, put through a strainer, and heat the pulp. 
Add as much sugar as you have pulp, cook until the 
sugar is dissolved, and put in a mold to cool. A few 
cranberries combine well with other fruit. Try cran- 
berries and raisins in a pudding, and use a little extra 
sugar. 

Barberries. This is an old-fashioned fruit that few 
people use ; and yet its tart flavor is quite unlike any 
other. If the bushes grow wild on your farm, do not 
let the animals destroy them, but transplant them to 
the garden. The berries can be used in several ways. 
They make a delicious jelly, and cooked with molasses 



ii 4 FOOD AND HEALTH 

and put away in jars they afford a refreshing drink 
stirred into cold water in the summer. Miss White of 
Pleasant Valley suggests that barberries and sweet apples 
make an excellent jam. 

How can dried fruit be made palatable ? The girls 
in the cooking class were quite sure that they could not 
like dried fruit, prunes being the poorest of all. We all 
" change our minds/' which means our opinions, some- 
times ; and so did they. Stewed figs are good ; and so 
are dates, cooked and spread on bread. Try dried 
prunes, peaches, apples, apricots, plums, and berries in 
this way : 

Directions for dried fruit. 

1. Wash the fruit. 

2. Soak it for several hours — perhaps overnight — to replace 
the water which was dried out. 

3. Cook it very slowly in a stew pan or in a slow oven, for sev- 
eral hours. 

4. Use as little water as possible and only a little sugar. 

5. If the fruit has a "flat" taste, add a little lemon juice, or a 
little cream of tartar, which is an acid, too. 

6. Sprinkle chopped nuts on the stewed fruit for variety and to 
increase the food value. 

Using canned fruit. If you buy fruit or vegetables 
in cans, look to see if the top is flat, for if it bulges, the 
fruit is spoiled. When you use either fruit canned at 
home or bought from the grocery, let it air in a dish in a 
clean, cool place. This will give it a better taste ; and it 
improves it even more to reheat it and let it cool again. 



THE HOME SUPPER 115 

Fruit for dessert. Fresh fruit and cooked fruit make 
the best of desserts at the end of a hearty meal, and are 
quite enough for supper. If you want something more, 
there are many dishes easy to make with fruit. 

Apple scallop, or Brown Betty. 

What and how much. 

Bread crumbs and a little butter 

Tart cooking apples, enough to fill a dish 

Sugar 

Cinnamon 

A little water 

How to make. Make a layer of crumbs in a baking dish, 
and on the crumbs put little "dabs" of butter. Pare and 
slice the apples and place a layer on the crumbs. Sprinkle 
with sugar, cinnamon, and a little water. Add a layer of 
bread crumbs and another of apples. Flavor and cover the 
top with crumbs. Bake in a moderate oven until the apples 
are cooked and the crumbs are brown. Any fruit, such 
as peaches or blueberries, may be used instead of apples. 
Serve hot with hard or foamy sauce, or cold with cream and 
sugar. Instead of crumbs the bread may be used in slices, 
buttered. 

Remarks. Remember the other food materials that were 
used in meat scallop, and try cooked rice or hominy or oatmeal 
in place of the bread. One family calls the fruit scallop Brown 
Elizabeth when it is made with peaches or apricots ; and Black 
Betty, with blackberries. Perhaps you can name some other 
members of this group. Stewed dates, or figs, or prunes are 
delicious with rice in a fruit scallop served cold. They are 
especially good with milk for little children who are beginning 
to be given sweets. They need no sugar added. 



n6 FOOD AND HEALTH 

Foamy sauce. 

What and how much. 

Butter 2 tablespoonfuls 

Powdered sugar I cup 

Egg i 

Vanilla I teaspoonful 

How to make. Cream the butter. Add gradually the 
sugar, the egg well beaten, and vanilla. Beat while heating 
over hot water. If too thick, add a little hot water. 

Fruit tapioca. 

What and how much. , 

Minute tapioca f cup 

Lemon peel 

Boiling water %\ cups 

Salt \ teaspoonful 

Tart apples 6 

Sugar \ cup 

How to make. Cook the tapioca in the salt and water until 
it becomes transparent. Core and pare the apples and place 
in the bottom of the baking dish. Fill the cavities with sugar 
and add a little lemon peel. Pour the tapioca over the apples 
and bake in a moderate oven until the apples are soft. Serve 
cold with sugar and cream. 

Remarks. This is sometimes called bird's nest pudding. 
Other fruit can be used. Prunes, with the stones out, are 
very delicious in the tapioca. There are still other ways for 
using fruit in puddings and desserts. Some of these you will 
find mentioned in Lesson 25 and in all cook books. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

I. Make a definition of "cooking,'' from what has been said 
about the baked apple. 



THE HOME SUPPER n 7 

2. Make a list of all the different ways of cooking that you 
know. 

3. Explain why fruit should be eaten daily. 

4. Can you find a very important reason for cooking figs and 
dates ? 

5. Compare the cost of a can of peaches from the grocery with 
home-canned peaches. What must you take into account ? 

Lesson 14 
value of potatoes as food 

Warmed-over potatoes are one of the best supper dishes. 
Potatoes, either freshly cooked or served a second time, are good 
for any meal. How shall we have potatoes for supper ? 

Americans are said to have the potato habit. We are 
told sometimes that it might be better to use oftener 
in their place some other starchy food, perhaps rice or 
hominy. These do make a pleasant change, but if you 
prefer potatoes, you can use them as freely as you like ; 
and there are many ways to prepare them to give variety. 
In spite of the fact that potatoes are attacked by insects 
and by diseases which the farmer must fight steadily, 
they are one of our staple foods. 

Why are potatoes such an important food ? Recall 
to your minds the substances in the foodstuffs that we 
talked about finding in milk and in bread made from 
wheat. Make the list on the blackboard or on paper 
or in your notebook, and check them as we talk about 
potatoes. 

Study this chart (Fig. 55) of a potato, and see if you 



Ash:1. 



118 FOOD AND HEALTH 

understand it. The perpendicular lines show what a 
large amount of water the potato has. State 78.3 per 
cent in a common fraction. There is so little of the fat 
and protein (see the dark lines toward the left) that we 
do not find the worth of the potato in these. Notice 
the word " carbohydrate." In per cent it ranks next 
to the water in quantity. This is a word that you will 
understand when you study chemistry, but we can learn 

about it now that, instead of 
POTATO saying starch and sugar, or 

Fat-01 2nXriw speaking of the starches and 

the sugars, the word carbo- 
hydrate stands for both. You 
Carbo^rateTl8r^Water:78.3 remember in the lesson on 
Fu el val ue: bread we spoke of the fact 

j| \ that starch and sugar are 

385 calories per pound alike, and that one can be 

Fig. 55— The composition of a changed into the other. The 

chemist has found them so 
much alike that he uses this name carbohydrate for 
both. If you wish to do so, look in the dictionary and 
see from what other words this one comes. 

Even before you study chemistry you can learn some- 
thing more about starch and sugar. Burn some sugar 
until it becomes entirely black. Taste this black sub- 
stance. You think it does not look eatable ? But it is 

1 United States Department of Agriculture. Office of the Experiment 
Stations, A. C. True, Director. Chart prepared by C. F. Langworthy, 
Expert in charge of Nutrition Investigations. 




THE HOME SUPPER 119 

what you eat whenever you take sugar or starch ; its 
name is " carbon/' and it is the same substance that you 
burn in the coal in the stove. The heat has driven off 
the water in the sugar, and left this black carbon l be- 
hind. We need the carbon for fuel in our bodies. We 
can use it when we take it in sugar and starch, although, 
as pure charcoal or carbon, it is useless to us as a food. 
Here are two questions that Miss James asked her 
class, and, in finding out the answers, her pupils learned 
one of the most wonderful of nature's true stories : 

" Where does the plant find the carbon to make into 
starch and sugar ? " 

and 

" From what source came the carbon of our coal ? " 

Here is another way to put the question. You may 
have heard your father and his friends talking over the 
question of fertilizers. If so, they have spoken of nitro- 
gen, phosphorus, and potash. Probably they have 
complained of their cost. How much does your father 
pay per ton for the carbon for his crops ? 

Energy for us in the potato. The carbon is fuel for 
us. It occurs in the carbohydrates, starch and sugar. 
Starch and a little sugar are in the potato (18 per cent) ; 
therefore, the potato gives us energy. This is one 
value. Ten cents' worth of potatoes at sixty cents per 
bushel gives us more energy than ten cents' worth of 
bread, even. 

1 See page 299. 



120 FOOD AND HEALTH 

Mineral value of potato. Look at Fig. 55 again. In 
that small space at the left is pictured the other prize 
in the potato, the mineral matter, — the ash that can- 
not be burned. There is a high percentage of potassium 
and calcium, and of phosphorus and iron, also. These 
the potato takes from the soil and stores away for the 
young plants that would grow from the buds. Our 
bodies need mineral matter, too. 

So let us keep on growing potatoes, in spite of Colo- 
rado beetles and the blight and scab. 

The cooking class was very much amused when Mar- 
jorie Allen told them what her little sister said at supper 
the evening after they had all studied the composition 
of the potato. Little Alice looked at the baked potato 
on her plate, and said, " Which end has the mineral 
matter ? " She thought that the chart of the potato 
was an exact picture. The little chart shows you how 
much mineral matter there would be, if it were all by 
itself and not mixed with the other substances in the 
potato. 

What is a starch grain ? The illustration (Fig. 56) 
shows you a slice of potato, magnified, before and 
after cooking. At the left the small bodies are the 
starch grains. See how the heat of the boiling tempera- 
ture of water changes their shape, unfolding or bursting 
them. The heat also softens the fiber of the potato. 
Thus, with these two changes made by heat, the potato 
is made more digestible. 

How shall we cook our potatoes ? The answer to this 



THE HOME SUPPER 



121 



would make a long list, and you might begin to make 
this list by writing down the ways that you know. 

The best way to cook the potato is one that keeps in 
the mineral matter. If we pare the potato, we lose the 
mineral matter near the skin, and allow a further loss 
as the potato cooks in boiling water. The best ways, then, 




Formers' Bulletin No. 205, V . S. Depl. A'jTicullure. 

Fig. 56. — Changes of starch cells in cooking: a, cells of a raw potato with starch 
grains in natural condition; b, cells of a partially cooked potato; c, cells of 
a thoroughly boiled potato. 

are baking, steaming, or boiling with the jackets on. 
Potatoes cooked in either of these three ways can be 
made into other " tasty " dishes. Learn how to boil a 
potato well ; and serve it plain sometimes. 

New and old potatoes. Potatoes are " new," fully 
ripe, and old. The new potato is in market in July and 
August, and may be known by its very thin skin. The 
later potatoes have a thicker skin, but the color still is 
fresh. In the spring after its winter storage, the potato 
is " old." It seems a little less firm ; the color of the 
skin is somewhat changed ; perhaps, the buds in the eyes 
of the potato are beginning to grow. When cooked it 



122 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



has a stronger flavor and a rather darker color. If the 
potato has been frozen, it has a sweet taste and the 
quality is waxy. Potatoes are sometimes poor in qual- 
ity when the season is unfavorable, or when some potato 
disease is prevalent. 

1. Baked potatoes. 

i. (The best method for new potatoes.) Select those of 
even size. When scrubbed, place them in a shallow pan or 
upon the rack of the oven. The oven should be hot. The 
length of time depends upon the size of the potato ; forty-five 
minutes is the time for medium size. 




Courtesy of Devartment of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College, Columbia University. 
Fig. 57. — Baked potatoes, mashed, seasoned, and returned to the skins. 

Test by pressing firmly, or by sticking in a fork. When the 
potato is done, it feels soft to the fingers. If the potatoes 
cannot be eaten at once, break the skin to let out the steam, 
cover with a cloth, and keep them hot. 

Here is a nice way to serve potatoes. Cut them in two, 



THE HOME SUPPER 123 

lengthwise; sprinkle with salt, and add as much butter as 
one would use at the table ; break up the potato with a fork, 
leaving it in the skin. 

Potato on the half shell is one step more. Cut the potatoes 
in two, lengthwise ; take out the potato and mash it with butter, 
milk, and salt; add about a teaspoonful of butter, a table- 
spoonful of milk, and a shake or two of salt, to each potato. 
Beat this well, put back piled lightly in each half shell, and 
brown the tops slightly. Sometimes you can put in a little 
chopped meat. The beaten white of an egg may be added to 
make a potato puff. 

2. The same as baked potatoes, except that the potatoes 
are pared before baking. This is a good method when the 
skins are poor. A brown crust is formed on the potato, which 
is crisp and pleasant to eat. Before baking, large potatoes 
may be cut in two or even sliced. 

2. Boiled potatoes. 

Have enough boiling water to cover the potatoes. Put 
the potatoes of uniform size into the kettle, one at a time, 
that the boiling may not stop. Allow a gentle boiling to con- 
tinue until the potatoes are done. Why avoid rapid boiling ? 
Test with a fork at the end of half an hour. When the 
potatoes are mellow, drain off the water, and set the kettle 
where the remaining moisture will steam off. Shake gently 
to hasten this process, and sprinkle the potatoes with salt. 
If they must stand before serving, shall you place a tin cover 
or cloth over the kettle ? Old potatoes with a strong flavor 
should be pared before boiling, or even soaked in cold water. 

3. Mashed potato. 

Mashed potato can be very poor when wet and lumpy. 
Do not use new, poor, or very old potatoes. See that the 
boiled potatoes are as dry as can be with every particle of water 
steamed away. Mash thoroughly with the wire masher; add 



124 



FOOD AND HEALTH 

butter or butterine, salt, and milk in about the proportions 
given for potato in the half shell. Use a tablespoonful or so 
of cream if you have it. Beat vigorously. The mealiness of 




Courtesy of Department of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College, Colum- 
bia University. 

Fig. 58. — A dish of mashed potato daintily served and browned in the oven. 

the potato and the beating make mashed potato perfect. The 
mashed potato should be light and moist, but not wet. Re- 
heat in the kettle. Pile lightly in a hot dish and serve; or 
smooth and brown the top before serving. 

4. Scalloped potato. 

Scalloped potato is a good supper dish. 

Wash, pare, and slice the potatoes in J inch pieces. Grease 
an earthen or enameled baking dish. Cover the bottom of the 
dish with a layer of the slices, sprinkle the slices lightly with 
flour, and put on two teaspoonfuls of butter, or butterine, in 
small bits. Continue until the dish is nearly full. Pour 
in milk to barely cover the potatoes, put a cover on the dish, 
and set the dish in a moderate oven. Remove the cover in 
time to allow the top to brown. Allow rather more than half 
an hour for the baking. 



THE HOME SUPPER 125 

5. Creamed potato. 

Here is an easy way. Chop cold baked or boiled potatoes 
with the chopper. Allow 1 tablespoonful of butter to 1 
pint of chopped potato. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir 
in the potatoes. Shake from the dredger the same amount as 
a tablespoonful of flour, stirring the potato with one hand 
as you shake with the other. Pour in enough milk to barely 
cover the chopped potato. Set the saucepan in the coolest 
spot on the range, or on an oil stove with low flame, upon an 
asbestos mat; or turn all into an earthenware jar or baking 
dish, and bake slowly until it becomes creamy. 

6. Potatoes warmed over in fat. 

This is an old-fashioned way and a good one. Have only a 
little fat in the frying pan ; and that very hot. The slices of 
potato will become brown as you turn them from side to side. 

7. Hashed brown potato. 

This is a delicious way to warm up cold potatoes. Chop 
the potatoes. To a quart of chopped potato add a tablespoon- 
ful of flour. Heat a frying pan and melt in it two tablespoon- 
fuls of beef fat. Stir the potato thoroughly into the fat. 
Press the mixture firmly down and set the pan where the 
potatoes will brown on the bottom. It is better to do this 
slowly, and you should allow half an hour. Turn the potatoes 
out on a large plate. There should be a nice brown crust, just 
as you have it in corned-beef hash. 



EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Make a list of the foodstuffs in potato, with the percent- 
ages. 

2. Make a list of the different ways of cooking potatoes. 

3. Explain why potatoes, meat, and meat gravy containing 
fat make a good meal. 



126 FOOD AND HEALTH 

4. Then, when you put other foods with potato to make a meal, 
what should the other foods contain ? 

5. Can you now add to or change the definition of cooking that 
you made in the lesson before ? 

Lesson 15 

griddlecakes and sweet cake 

Are griddlecakes and sweet cake wholesome for supper and 
other meals ? 

The quick breads are convenient for any meal when 
there is time enough to bake them ; especially in cold 
weather, when there is more likely to be a steady fire. 

The quickest batter to mix and bake is the griddle- 
cake, or pancake. Almost every one likes them, when 
they are a fine brown, served with sugar, or maple sugar 
or sirup, or molasses. But how wholesome a food are 
they ? This was another question that Miss Travers 
answered at the school exhibit, when they were discuss- 
ing quick breads. The answer was something like this : 
We must remember that, although two cooked foods 
may have the same materials in them, one is easily 
digested and the other is not. And why ? 

What do we mean by " digestible " ? " To digest " 
means " to dissolve," to make liquid. All solid food 
must become liquid, before it can be absorbed and 
carried about the body by the blood. The water that 
we drink helps to do this, but nature has provided us 
with substances, beginning with the saliva in the mouth, 
that help in the work of dissolving. You know that 



THE HOME SUPPER 127 

when you begin to chew food the saliva begins to flow, 
and, when the food reaches the stomach, the stomach 
begins to churn the food, and the- gastric juice flows 
from the walls of the stomach to help this digestive 
process. 1 

What difference is there between the digestibility 
of the griddlecake, and of a light, dry muffin or biscuit ? 
The flour in the griddlecake is not well cooked, for the 
time is too short. The cake is so soft that we do not 
chew it ; and so the starch in the flour has missed the 
first step of digestion. This pasty mass in the stomach 
is a bad thing, especially with the large amount of sugar 
that we usually take on griddlecakes. But we like 
griddlecakes and we cannot go without them ! Can we 
not, when it is a choice between being strong and well, 
happy and helpful, on the one hand, and half well and 
dull with indigestion, on the other ? There is no reason 
why healthy people should not eat griddlecakes once in 
a while ; but griddlecakes are not meant for a steady 
diet. 

How can we make griddlecakes more digestible ? 
If people insist on eating them, we will try to make them 
as wholesome as we can. 

1. Use some material that has been cooked before, — 
bread crumbs, cooked corn meal, oatmeal, rice, or any 
other cooked cereal. 

2. Make them very light and porous with sour milk 
and soda, or with baking powder. One good cook 

1 See a physiology for further description of the digestive process. 



128 FOOD AND HEALTH 

makes delicious, dry, light griddlecakes by using sour 
milk and soda, and a little baking powder, too. 

3. Bake the griddlecakes as thoroughly as you can. 
Do not take them from the griddle the moment they are 
brown, but let them stand until they are cooked " inside." 

4. Do not drown them in sirup or bury them in sugar 
when you eat them. 

5. Take small mouthfuls, and try to chew each por- 
tion. 

Sour milk griddlecakes. 

What and how much. 



Flour 

Salt 

Melted butter 


2J cups 

J teaspoonful 

2 tablespoonfuls 


Sour milk 

Soda 

Egg 


2 cups 

1 J teaspoonfuls 

1 



How to make. Mix dry ingredients. Add sour milk, egg 
well beaten, and melted butter in order given. Beat thor- 
oughly. Drop by spoonfuls on a greased griddle, and let 
cook until the edges are done and the cake full of bubbles. 
Turn with a cake turner or knife, and cook on the other side. 
Serve with butter and sirup or scraped maple sugar. 

Cake making. One of the Pleasant Valley girls said 
that her father and brothers wanted cake at every meal. 
Cake has good food materials in it ; so why should we 
not eat it often ? Some food has to be cooked ; why 
should it not be cake ? The answer to this is a simple 
one. Although sugar is an important fuel food, yet, 



THE HOME SUPPER 



129 



if we use too much, it is likely to cause an acid ferment 
in digestion and to irritate the stomach. Little children 
should not take more than two ounces a day, and grown 
people about four. We should not eat sweets between 




Courtesy of the Department of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College, Columbia University. 
Fig. 59. — ■ Marjorie Allen made a loaf of cake for supper one Saturday. 

meals ; and the best time for a piece of candy, even, is 
at the end of a meal. 

Cake is a soft food, too ; so we swallow it easily with- 
out chewing. For this latter reason, cookies, which 
are drier, are more wholesome than cake. Moreover, if 
we depend on cake, we may take less of more useful foods 
like bread and butter, vegetables and fruit, eggs and milk, 



13° 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



Must we give up cake ? No, indeed ; but we should 
be temperate in using it. We think of the word " tem- 
perance " in connection with alcohol, but it can be ap- 
plied to eating, just as well. 

Miss James gave very little time to cake making in 
her cooking lessons, because the Pleasant Valley girls, 
who could cook little else, already knew how to make 
cake. Most families have good rules of their own for 
cake, cake filling, gingerbread, and cookies. 

Miss James advised the girls to learn to make one 
cake mixture and to use it with different flavorings and 
fillings. They laughed at first when Miss James spoke 
of one-egg cake, and were sure that it would not be good, 
but they found it very light and well flavored. Miss 
James explained that when eggs bring a good price it 
is sensible to use as few as possible in cake. Here are 
a few of her rules : 

A table of three recipes for one and two egg cake. 



What and how much. 

Butter 

Sugar 

Egg ...... 

Flour . . % . . 
Baking powder 
Moisture . . . . 

Molasses . . . . 

Vanilla 

Chocolate . . . . 

Ginger 

Allspice 



4 tb. 


5 tb. 


£ c 

4 C ' 


I c. 


I 


2 


2 C. 


2 C 


2 t. 


2 t. 


|c. 


ic. 


it. 


it. 


or 




2 tb. 





4 tb. 

2 c. 

i 

2 C. 



I t. 
I t. 



THE HOME SUPPER 131 

Mixed spices for a cake. 

Cloves and allspice J teaspoonful each 

Mace and nutmeg 1 teaspoonful each 

Cinnamon 3 teaspoonfuls 

Remarks. This is the table that Miss James showed the class 
how to use in their notebooks. You have made quick breads. 
Can you not think out the way of mixing cake ? Remember 
about creaming (rubbing soft) the butter and sugar. See 
Lesson 20. 

Cookies. 

What and how much. 

Butter 1 cup 

Sugar if cups 

Eggs 2 

Milk 3 tablespoonfuls 

Flour about 3 cups 

Baking powder 1 teaspoonful 

Salt 1 J teaspoonfuls 

How to make. The flavoring may be two teaspoonfuls of 
vanilla, or lemon essence, one or two tablespoonfuls of ground 
spice, or caraway seeds. 

For baking use a floured iron sheet or flat pan. Tempera- 
ture 400 F., or even more. The baking requires from 15 
to 20 minutes, depending on the thickness of the cooky. 

Method of mixing. Sift all the flour, and stir the salt and 
baking powder with one cup of the flour. Cream the butter, 
and beat in the sugar. Beat the whites and yolks of the eggs 
together, and add to the creamed butter and sugar. Add the 
flour and milk alternately; that is, a quarter or third of the 
flour, then a portion of the milk, and so on. First stir; then 
beat vigorously. 

Shaping the cookies. Turn the dough out upon the floured 
board, gently roll it out to a quarter of an inch, cut and place 



i 3 2 FOOD AND HEALTH 

cookies in a floured pan ; or, cut off a small piece, roll it in the 
flour, and pat it down to a round. This last way may seem to 
take longer; but it is easier, and there is no board to clean 
afterward. 

A plainer cooky is made with § cup butter and J cup water 
or milk, with somewhat more flour. 

Remarks. These are a good sweet for children to take for 
the school lunch and to serve at entertainments. 

Sugar from the farm. When the home-making 
class at the Pleasant Valley School studied the ques- 
tion of sugar and sweet cakes, Miss James talked about 
the use of maple sugar in place of the cane or beet 
sugar that we buy. There is a sugar-maple grove 
on the Allen farm, and the pupils were invited to a 
" sugaring off," when the time came for making the 
sugar and sirup. 1 Mrs. Allen has the old-fashioned 
habit of using maple sugar at the table for cereals, 
for berries and fruit, and even for coffee and tea ; she 
finds it useful in cooking, also. It is worth while to set 
out sugar maples, for they grow as far south as Texas, as 
well as in the eastern states, middle west, and northwest. 

Why not keep bees ? We may make sugar in the 
home grounds, and employ honeybees to do the work. 
A few hives are not difficult to care for, and the bees 
will more than repay us for our labor. 

Using honey in place of cane sugar. Honey is deli- 
cious on cereal and bread. We are experimenting 
with its use in cooking, a practice common in old times, 

1 See Farmers' Bulletin No. 516, and Bureau of Forestry Bulletin No. 
59, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



THE HOME SUPPER 133 

especially in Europe. It may be used in cakes, cookies, 
and desserts. There is an acid in honey, and, there- 
fore, it can take the place of molasses in some recipes. 

Soft honey cakes. 1 

What and how much. 

Butter \ cup 

Honey 1 cup 

Egg 1 

Sour milk \ cup 

Soda 1 teaspoonful 

Cinnamon \ teaspoonful 

Ginger \ teaspoonful 

Flour 4 cups 

How to make. Rub the butter and honey together; add 

the egg well beaten, the milk and the flour sifted with soda 

and spices. Bake in a shallow pan. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Explain why a dry, well-baked muffin is better than a fresh 
griddlecake. 

2. Study the two rules for cake and see how many variations 
you can make. 

3. Describe the baking of a loaf of cake. 

4. Why is it better not to eat sweet cake at every meal ? 

5. Explain why sugar, which is a good food, can do us harm. 

Lesson 16 

clearing up 

Have you ever wished at the end of a meal for a good fairy 

like one of those in the stones who waves a wand : " Presto" — and 

table and dishes vanish ? Can "clearing up" after supper be made 

pleasant ? 

1 See Farmers' Bulletin No. 653 for this and other recipes with honey. 



i 3 4 F00D AND HEALTH 

There are some people who like to wash dishes. For 
the rest of us there is nothing to do but to make an art 
of cleaning up thoroughly, quickly, and cheerfully. 
One of our great writers, Mr. William James, tells us 
that when we feel unhappy, if we behave as if we were 
cheerful, all at once we shall find that we really are 
cheerful ! Try it when it is dish-washing time. 

When dish washing is done well, it is really a pretty 
piece of work. When we hurry through and it is badly 
done, — the dishes, spoons, and forks are left " sticky," 
the sink greasy, the towels unclean, — what more un- 
pleasant task ! 

Here is something to remember at the very beginning 
of our talks about cleanliness. Nothing can be half- 
clean. A thing is either clean, or it is not ; and when it 
is not clean it is " dirty." If one spot of spilled food 
is left anywhere, how soon that one fly finds it ! 

The importance of cleanliness. Cleanliness is not 
only beautiful and comfortable, but it is an enemy of ill 
health, sickness, disease. When we study sanitation, 
which we hear about so often, we are studying how to 
keep clean ; and that is all. The word sanitation comes 
from a Latin word meaning " health." You cannot see 
what this has to do with dish washing ? Sore throats 
and other sicknesses will go from one member of a family 
to another on half-washed spoons, forks, cups ; and a 
musty dishcloth or mop, may be a source of illness. 

What does cleaning up after a meal mean ? It means 
putting the uneaten food neatly away ; collecting the 



THE HOME SUPPER 135 

scraps ; leaving the table in order, and the floor under- 
neath free from crumbs ; having all the dishes washed, 
the glasses and silver shiny and set away in order, 
and the sink and dish towels spotlessly clean. 

What do we need for dish washing ? Water, air, 
sunshine are nature's cleansers, always at work if we 
give them a chance. When we wash dishes, we need 
plenty of clean hot water. 

Soft and hard water. Rain water is always " soft." 
Brook and spring water and even well water are some- 
times so. When the water takes up lime or iron from 
the soil, we then have a " hard " water ; and you 
know that it is hard when the soap does not make foamy 
suds. One kind of hard water is improved by boiling, 
and another is not ; with either we need to use borax, 
ammonia, or some stronger washing powder in the 
water. If you are still making and using the old-fash- 
ioned " soft soap," there is nothing better to soften the 
water ; but many people have given up doing this. 

Plenty of hot water. When there is running water in 
the house, the easiest way is to have a boiler connected 
with the stove, and a water back put in for heating the 
water. Some stoves, either coal or wood, come with a 
tank at the back into which water can be poured. It 
is in summer weather when we do not need a hot fire that 
the question of water is troublesome. If you are using 
kerosene, you may still have plenty of hot water, with a 
little thought and care. Study in Lesson 26 the At- 
kinson and the fireless cookers, and this may suggest 



i3 6 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



to you a way of having hot water for dishes without 
heating the kitchen. A large pail of water can be 
brought to a boil on a kerosene stove, and kept hot either 



H 1 A\ 'Ife. 1 '■■■■ '- ■ m »" mk 

BBBl 

I i " il 





Courtesy of Miss Ethel Dole. 

Fig. 6o. —Washing dishes. Notice the rack at the left for draining dishes. 
The sink is too low. 



in the Atkinson or in a fireless, ready for the next dish 
washing. 

A word about soap. Soap making was always done 
at home in the days of our great-grandmothers. For 
this purpose they saved fat to be boiled with lye made 
from wood ashes. In these days a good soap can be 
purchased cheaply. Buying soap is one way of saving 



THE HOME SUPPER 137 

time and strength in the country home. It does not 
cost much less bought by the box than by the dozen 
cakes or bars, but it can be laid away to harden if we 
buy a large quantity at one time. Borax or naphtha 
soap is a help when the water is hard. 

Washing the dishes. With plenty of hot water, 
soap, and something to soften the water, with a dish- 
pan and another pan for rinsing, we are ready for action. 
Remember to have ready a clean dishcloth and towels, — 
if used, — dried in air and sun, although not necessarily 
ironed. Perhaps you have a soap shaker, with small 
pieces of soap put into it. Make one from a tin can, 
with holes driven in by a large nail and hammer, near 
the bottom of the can. You also need fine sand, or a 
gritty cleaner or soap, and a small stiff brush. 

1. The cooking utensils have been standing with cold 
water in them ; or, if greasy, with hot water and a little 
washing powder. 

2. Scrape and pile the dishes — dishes of a kind 
together. Rub greasy dishes off with soft paper, and 
put the paper in the stove. 

3. Put water in pans, and use the shaker vigorously. 
How clean and sweet the soapsuds smell ! 

4. Wash a dish at a time, the cleanest first. Why ? 
Do not fill the pan with dishes first. Why ? 

5. Rinse the dishes in the clear hot water pan and 
wipe ; or, better still, arrange the dishes as in Fig. 61, 
pour boiling water over them, and allow them to drain 
dry. 



138 FOOD AND HEALTH 

6. Change the dishwater if it begins to look greasy 
and unpleasant. 

7. Wash the cooking utensils as clean as the glasses 
and silver. This may mean a good scrubbing on the 
bottom. The iron pot or pan can be just as clean, and 
should be, as any other dish. Be doubly sure that all 
utensils that can rust are dry, before you put them away. 

8. If there are any steel knives, leave them clean and 
dry. 

9. Wash out the towels in clean soapsuds, rinse and 
hang outdoors ; or, if stormy, dry them near the stove, 
and then put them away. 

10. Wash out the dish pans and put them to dry. 

1 1 . Wash the sink, leaving it sweet and clean and dry. 
If there is a waste pipe, with or without running water, 
put some cleanser down, with some clean water. A 
little kerosene helps here. 

12. Put all the dishes away. 

13. Of course, a thoroughly good housekeeper leaves 
the kitchen table and stove clean, too. 

Do you draw a long breath, glad that it is over ? It 
is not so long a task as it sounds, if done promptly. 
If you hurry too much, see the " nicks " on the dishes. 

Can we not save some time and trouble ? 

Yes, indeed. Barbara Oakes reported a cleaning-up 
game, where the children divided the work so there was 
something for No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 to do, taking turns at 
different times. Barbara said that one was made in- 
spector, to see that each thing was properly done. They 



THE HOME SUPPER 



139 



had found that singing in chorus helped a bit, when 
everybody seemed a little " out of sorts." 

A number of people have been studying the question 
of dish towels, and they tell us that the very cleanest 
way to finish off our dishes is to arrange them in a rack 
in such a way that they can be well rinsed with boiling 




Courtesy of Domestic Utilities Co., Newark., N. J. 
Fig. 61. — Dishes placed in a round rack. 

water. If they have been thoroughly washed in the 
soapsuds, the hot water rinses off the suds and the dishes 
will drain dry. Figure 60 shows such a rack standing 
on the drain board at the left. A better way is to have 
a round rack with a handle. Place the dishes as you 
see them in Fig. 61. Empty the dish pan, fill it with 
hot water, and set it on the stove. Lower the rack 



i 4 o FOOD AND HEALTH 

of dishes into the water and let it remain until the 
water boils. Lift the rack, drain off the water, and set 
the rack where the dishes will dry quickly. A few may 
need polishing with a clean towel. 

Can we " save dishes " ? This you will have to talk 
over with Mother. Somebody suggests using paper 




Courtesy of New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. 
Fig. 62. — Paper dishes for saving work. 

or wooden plates sometimes in summer, and burning 
them. Another way to save dishes is to put more than 
one kind of food on the serving dish or platter (Fig. 63), 
or to put the food on the table in the dish in which 
it is cooked, when this is possible (Fig. 64). If we 
use large plates at each place, we can put several kinds 
of food upon the plate, instead of having many small 
dishes. The use of heavy plated knives will save rub- 



THE HOME SUPPER 



141 




Courtesy of Department of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College, Columbia University. 

Fig. 63. — One way to save dishes is to put more than one kind of food on the 
serving dish or platter. 























,,/ 




vB 








^^^ 


"W- 




•■'•' ; - y --Ci>^ 


J8S 


W - % ^Bf 


Mr* 


- 





Courtesy of New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. 
Fig. 64. — Utensils in which foods may be both cooked and served. 



142 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



bing. Some people save one dish washing by rinsing 
off the supper dishes, piling them up, and covering them 
to be washed with the breakfast dishes ; but perhaps 

this is not a good plan 
with a very large family 
where we need a large 
number of dishes. 

A dishwasher. Show 
your mother this pic- 
ture, Fig. 65, and ask 
her what she thinks 
about having a dish- 
washer. There are 
several made for family 
use, which may be 
found a help in a large 
family. This would be 
a good question for the 
Woman's Club to ask 
Miss Travers or some 
one else at the State 
College. Can you rec- 
ommend a good dish- 
washer ? 

What shall we do 
with our waste water ? It is all very well to turn dish- 
water into the sink and let the water run out through 
the drain ; but what becomes of it ? 

All slops from the house must be carried far away 




Fig. 65. — A dishwasher saves time and 
work. 



THE HOME SUPPER 



H3 



from the house and poured out in some way so that no 
moisture or filth collects. In the lesson on vegetables 



•ssjfs^Zfa 




Fig. 66. 



Courtesy of New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. 

A waste water hopper prevents moisture and filth from collecting 
around the house. 



we speak of taking out the slops in dry weather for 
watering purposes. Drainage from the house can be 
carried out in pipes to the garden, provided the slope of 




Septic tank 

Courtesy of New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. 

Fig. 67. — A safe plan is to have a septic tank built underground into which 
the waste water drains. 

the land is right for this. If this cannot be done, a very 
safe plan is to have a tank built underground into 
which the waste water drains and from which it is 



i 4 4 FOOD AND HEALTH 

carried out. Never let slop water of any kind collect 
in a wet or bad-smelling spot under the window, or any- 
where near the house. This is one of the most impor- 
tant matters in our housekeeping. Your mother and 
father can have pamphlets from the government telling 
them just what to do. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Why may it be dangerous to have slops poured out near the 
house ? 

2. Make a plan of taking care of slop water at home. 

3. How can you simplify dish washing at school and at home? 

4. What are the most important points in dish washing ? 

5. What is the danger in a damp, old mop or a partly soiled 
dish towel ? 

6. Give some suggestions for saving dishes in the preparation 
of a meal. 

7. It is baking day. How are you going to "save dishes" and 
make clearing up easy ? 

REVIEW 

1. Make a drawing showing how to place the dishes and the 
silver for a home supper for six persons. 

2. What do you like for supper in the winter ? for supper in 
summer ? 

3. Can you think of some meat substitutes for supper ? 

4. What is essential to a good salad ? 

5. You have been told that you should not drink tea. Do 
you know why tea is injurious ? 

6. Careless cooks make very poor tea. Just how should tea 
be made ? 

7. Give the two methods for canning fruit. 



THE HOME SUPPER 145 

8. How does preserving fruit differ from canning ? 

9. Outline the process of making jelly. 

10. What fruits will you use when you make jelly ? Why ? 

11. You have heard of girls' canning clubs. Can you tell how 
to can tomatoes or peas ? 

12. What is the value of fruit in the diet ? ■ 

13. In what ways may apples or pears be cooked during the 
winter ? 

14. Does the potato contain any valuable food substances ? 

15. Describe the effect of cooking on the potato. 

16. There are many good ways of cooking a potato. How 
many ways can you describe ? 

17. Have you learned anything about washing dishes ? 

18. What is the difference between hard and soft water? 

19. Tell how you can help in preparing supper at home on 
Saturday. 




CHAPTER IV 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 



Lesson 17 



SUITABLE BREAKFAST DISHES 



What do we like for breakfast ? 

When the Pleasant Valley cooking class began to ask 
this question, there were so many different answers 
that the chairman of the luncheon committee for the 
week was glad that they were not having breakfast at 
school, because it would be harder than ever to suit 
everybody. , 

How can you explain such differences as these ? Miss 
James said that in the warm weather, even when she 
was teaching, she was satisfied with fruit, boiled eggs, 
buttered toast, and cocoa or coffee ; on a cold morning, 
in addition to the other things, she liked a large portion 
of oatmeal or some other cereal with cream or with but- 

146 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 



H7 



ter and sugar ; but she seldom ate meat for breakfast. 
Most of the pupils reported that their fathers were not 
suited at all with such a meal ; that for breakfast they 
called for ham and eggs, or bacon and eggs, boiled pota- 
toes, and hot biscuit or corn bread, perhaps doughnuts, 
or even pie. Mollie Stark said the doctor told her father 
that it was no wonder he had indigestion on Sunday 
when he ate sausages and buckwheat cakes with maple 
sirup for breakfast, and did much less work than usual ; 
and that, on a week day in the winter, if he were working 
in the wood lot at chopping trees, it would be quite an- 
other matter. 

This led to a very interesting talk about the kind 
and amount of food for different people, at different 
times. 

Breakfast plans. Several different plans for break- 
fast were put on the blackboard, somewhat as follows : 







BREAKFAST 


PLANS 


I 


II 


III 


IV 


Fruit 


Fruit 


Fruit 


Fruit 


Toast 


Cereal 


Meat 


Cereal 


Beverage 


Toast 


Toast 


Meat 




Beverage 


Beverage 


Toast 
Beverage 



V 

Fruit 

Cereal 

Meat 

Another hot dish 

Toast 

Beverage 

Miss James explained that bread or biscuit might take 
the place of toast, and that eggs, milk, or fish could be 
substituted for meat. Miss James said, also, that in 
all these plans the foodstuffs are present ; that is, 



i 4 8 FOOD AND HEALTH 

starch and sugar, fat, protein, mineral substances, and 
water. In breakfast V there is a greater quantity of 
food all together, and more of the protein and fat than 
in breakfast I. 

How can there be so many kinds of breakfast ? They 
are all real, because somewhere just such meals are 
being eaten by somebody. 

One reason for a light breakfast. When you are 
traveling on the continent of Europe you have coffee 
or chocolate, and rolls, with perhaps a little honey, 
given to you for the first meal of the day ; and you 
soon find it is all you want, because your last meal the 
evening before was dinner, the heartiest of the day. 
In some of the cities of our own country, many people 
eat very little breakfast, and that of a simple kind, be- 
cause they, too, have had their dinner at night. So, 
after a heavy meal late in the day, a light breakfast seems 
to be the natural thing. But that is only one reason 
for the differences. 

Work and eating. There are people in the big city 
who want a breakfast like IV or V, and who might be 
willing to go without the fruit for something more 
" hearty." The man who is working hard with his 
muscles in the open air eats more and can digest kinds 
of food that another cannot who is quieter, and "who is 
sitting at a desk all day. Marjorie Allen said that her 
uncle, who is the cashier of a bank, wants a breakfast 
something like Miss James's, or like I, II, or III. The 
amount and kind of physical work that you are to do 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 149 

after breakfast, then, should affect what you eat. If 
you yourself should eat sausages and breakfast cakes 
with sirup for breakfast and then should sit down to 
work on a problem in square or cube root, you would 
probably find yourself sleepy. But if you are in good 
health, if it is a Saturday morning in winter, and if 
you are going skating, you will be better able to digest 
such a breakfast. 

How does the season of the year affect the meal ? 
In the summer time it is hard to digest sausage and 
griddle cakes with sirup. Meat is not the best food 
for hot weather. Yet the farmer needs a hearty 
breakfast to do a day's work. Give him some cheese. 
Indeed, in haying time bread and milk would make one 
of the best of breakfasts, if Father could be persuaded 
to think so. If he thinks that would not " stay by " 
him, why not oatmeal, with bread and milk, then ? 

Size and eating. Who eats more, the baby or 
a grown person ? A strong man, six feet tall, weighing 
say 180 pounds, must eat more for breakfast than a 
small person ; somewhat as a large stove takes more 
fuel than a small one. If he is in health and working 
hard, he can digest food and the body can use food of a 
kind that gives other people indigestion. But such a 
man even can make mistakes in his food sometimes. 

A few breakfast dishes. Suppose we plan for a break- 
fast like No. IV, — baked apples, oatmeal with milk and 
sugar, a meat dish, corn bread, and cocoa or coffee. 
What shall we have for the meat dish ? 



i 5 o FOOD AND HEALTH 

Do you know how to make a good corned-beef hash ? 

Corned-beef hash. 

What. Cold corned beef, and cold boiled or baked potatoes. 

How much. Equal amounts of both and enough to fill 
the large frying pan, or "spider," as it is sometimes called, 
if that is enough for your family. 

How to make. Chop the meat and potatoes together ; add 
a little water and a tablespoonful of flour. Mix all well. 
Heat the pan, and put in enough fat — say beef fat — to 
cover the bottom of the pan. Turn in the meat and potatoes, 
and smooth the top. Let it cook where it will brown but not 
burn. It should be put on when you are beginning to get 
breakfast. When breakfast is ready, slip a knife around the 
edge and under the hash. Turn it out on a hot plate or 
platter. It should have a nice, brown crust. Never mind 
if the crust breaks, for the hash will have a good flavor, even if 
if it does not look so well. 

Another way is to use mashed potato. Then the chopped 
meat must be mixed with the potato while the latter is hot. 
This mixture can be baked and served in an earthen dish. 

Fish hash. 

What. Salt codfish, raw potato; fish shredded, and potato 
cut into small pieces. I or 2 eggs. 

How much. Equal parts of the two : 2 cups of codfish, and 
2 cups of potato. 1 egg will make a good dishful. 

How to make. Have a saucepan ready with enough boiling 
water in it to cover the potato and fish. Turn into it the fish 
and potato. Let them cook until the potato is tender — 
about 20 minutes. Drain off the water, break the egg into the 
hash, mash, and beat hard for a minute. While the potato and 
fish are cooking, grease a baking dish. Turn the mixture into 
the dish, and brown the hash in the oven. 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 151 

Another way is to cook 2 eggs hard while the potato and 
fish are cooking, slice them, and put them on top of the hash 
in the dish in which you will serve it. Do not brown the top. 
Which of these two ways is quicker ? 

Creamed dried beef. 

Do you ever smoke beef on your farm ? You are fortunate, 
if you do. 

What. Dried beef sliced, milk or skimmed milk, beef fat, 
flour. 

How much. Enough beef to nearly fill the frying pan. 
2 tablespoonfuls fat, and about 2 tablespoonfuls flour. Enough 
milk to cover the beef, a cup or more. 

How to make. Put the beef in the pan. Pour on hot water 
and let it stand a few minutes on the stove. Pour off" the 
water and let the beef steam off* for a minute. Add the fat 
and stir until the fat begins to "sizzle." Shake on the flour, 
from a shaker if you have one, and stir again until the flour 
is mixed in evenly. Pour in the milk, cold ; stir once more. 
Let the pan stand back on the stove, stirring once in a while 
until the milk is thickened. Serve as it is, or on toast. 

" Frizzled " beef with egg. 

How to make. Do everything as you did with the creamed 
dried beef, through stirring in the fat. Then add 2 or 3 
beaten eggs ; stir very fast, — scramble, in fact, — until 
the egg is cooked ; then serve at once. 

We shall find some other breakfast dishes farther on in the 
book. 

How can we make it easy to get breakfast ? We have 
said nothing about Mother, so far, in our talk about 
breakfast, but she is probably the one who is interested 
in preparing the meal and in having it ready quickly. 



1 52 FOOD AND HEALTH 

One way to save time in the morning is to make some 
things partly ready the night before. 

Read the two recipes for hash again, and see what 
could be done beforehand. These recipes and the two 
for* dried beef are planned to use as few utensils as 
possible. This saves dish washing. In the lessons on 
cereals we shall find there are other ways of saving time 
for Mother in the early morning. 

Making coffee for breakfast. Many grown people 
think that they cannot do without the cup of fragrant 
coffee in the morning. Miss James explained to the 
cooking class that, although young people should not 
drink it themselves, they ought to know how to make 
it well for other people. She advised them to use, in- 
stead of true coffee, a hot drink made from grain roasted 
and ground. 

What is cereal coffee ? Mollie Stark's grandmother 
told her that crust coffee could be made from the old- 
fashioned brown bread, which is a mixture of rye and 
Indian meal, sweetened with a little molasses. The 
crusts should be dried in the oven, made fine with a 
rolling pin, and kept dry in a jar, ready for use. The 
beverage is made by putting a cupful of these crumbs 
into a coffeepot, pouring on a quart of boiling water, 
and letting the pot stand at the back of the stove for 
about half an hour. 

Very few people make this kind of brown bread now- 
adays, but we may still have cereal coffee. If you have 
grain on the farm take equal parts of popcorn, shelled 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 



153 



rye, and wheat grains, roast them slowly in a pan in the 
oven until they are brown all the way through, keep 
the parched grain in tight jars, and grind in the coffee 
grinder just as you would coffee grains. A little prac- 
tice will tell you just how much water to use to a cupful 
of the ground grain. Gentle boiling for half an hour 
gives a beverage of very good flavor. This homemade 
cereal coffee is less costly than the kinds that may be 
purchased. 

What is real coffee ? The coffee bean comes from a 
tree growing in tropic countries, which first came from 
Arabia. Now most 
of our coffee comes 
from Brazil, from 
Central America, 
and from the West 
Indies, although we 
still use the names 
Mocha and Java. 
The berries are cured 
and roasted before we grind them for making. Has 
your mother ever thought of buying green coffee by the 
bag from some wholesale firm and roasting it in a slow 
oven from time to time ? If this seems too much 
trouble, she can buy good coffee, already roasted, from 
the wholesale dealer, for not more than 19 or 20 cents 
a pound. It is much better to buy it this way than 
ground in tins, for you will have a better flavor when 
you grind it just before using. 





rSrambhall Dean Co. 



Courtesy of t 

Fig. 68. — A pot for boiling coffee and a pot for 
drip coffee. 



154 



FOOD AND HEALTH 




Courtesy of Landers, Frary and Clark,. 
Fig. 69. — A coffee percolator. 



Coffee contains two substances that are not especially 
good for us. One is caffeine, very much like the theine 

of tea, and the other is a form 
of tannic acid. While we may 
like the flavor of coffee boiled 
a long time, it is much better 
to boil it only a minute or two, 
or to make drip coffee. The 
long boiling draws out the 
harmful tannic acid. Also the 
liquid coffee should be poured 
off the grounds at once. Here 
are pictures (Figs. 68 and 69) 
that show the different kinds of coffeepots. In the 
" percolator" the water boils up through the coffee ; in 
the drip coffeepot the water is poured on from above 
and slowly drips through the coffee grounds. If you 
buy a percolator, the directions usually come with it. 

Boiled coffee. 

What. Ground coffee, water, cold or boiling, white of egg 
or eggshell for boiled coffee. The coffee should be ground 
to medium fineness for boiled coffee ; to a finer powder for the 
percolated and drip coffee. 

How much. One part of coffee to 5 or 6 of water, depending 
upon the strength desired. One eggshell or half the white 
of an egg, to 1 cup of ground coffee. 

How to make. Measure the coffee and water. Stir the 
white or the shell of an egg with the coffee, adding a little of 
the water. Put this into the pot. Add the remaining water 
cold. Stir thoroughly. Allow the water to rise slowly to 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 155 

the boiling point and to boil one minute. Remove the pot 
from the fire. Pour in a small amount of cold water. Then 
let the coffee stand for five minutes or until the grounds 
settle. During the cooking close the lip with clean, soft 
paper, if the lip has no lid. The actual boiling is continued for 
a brief period only. Coffee made by this method is consid- 
ered by some people to have a flavor lacking in drip or perco- 
lator coffee. The egg is added to clear the coffee. Pour 
off the liquid coffee from the grounds, and keep hot until 
it is time to serve it. 

A second method differs from this in that the water is poured 
on at the boiling temperature, allowed to reach the boiling 
point in two or three minutes, and boiled for five minutes. 
The first gives uniformly better results. It is true, however, 
that different kinds of coffee need different treatment. There 
is room here for much experimenting. 

Drip coffee. 

How to make. In this method the coffee is put in the upper 
part of the pot, and the water passes slowly through, collect- 
ing below in the pot from which it is served. Stand the lower 
part of the pot in a pan of hot water, or where it will keep hot. 
Measure and bring the water to the boiling point. Heat the 
ground coffee slightly, put it in the upper section of the pot, 
and pour on the water very slowly. Of course the water is 
not actually boiling when it touches the coffee. If the liquid 
coffee is not strong enough, pour it from the lower part and 
pass it through the grounds again. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Take one of the breakfast plans most nearly like the break- 
fast you have at home, and make several breakfast menus, writing 
in the names of the different dishes, as is done on page 147. 

2. Look up the meaning of the word "menu." 



i 5 6 FOOD AND HEALTH 

3. Explain, as you would to your mother and father, why 
fat pork would be better for breakfast in winter than in summer. 

4. When you are quiet, why do you need different foods from 
those when you are exercising all day ? 

5. Here is a question that you perhaps cannot answer yet; 
it will set you thinking. If you have slept out of doors, are you 
hungrier in the morning than if you had slept in a closed room all 
night ? 

6. Explain why coffee should be poured off the coffee grounds 
at once. 

7. Why is drip coffee supposed to be less harmful than boiled 
coffee ? 

Lesson 18 

breakfast cereals 
Why are breakfast cereals a valuable food ? 

It is our custom to use a cereal : for breakfast, more 
often than at other meals. For this reason the name 
" breakfast food " is sometimes given to ground cereals. 
If we have learned to like these grain foods, we shall find 
them good for supper, and sometimes for the midday 
meal as well. 

If you have read about life in Scotland, you know that 
oatmeal in porridge is one of the dishes on which the 
Scotch grow strong and efficient. Our forefathers 
found the American Indians using corn ; and they 
themselves learned to grind the corn and to make the 
meal into " hasty pudding/' or " mush," over the open 
fire, in a kettle hanging on the crane. 

1 " Cereal " is derived from the Latin word " cerealis," pertaining to 
Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture. 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 157 

Nowadays, we use not only the oatmeal and corn 
meal, butmany varieties of " flaked " and rolled grains, 
such as wheat, barley, and even rye. We raise rice in 
some of our southern states ; this adds one more valu- 
able food to the wealth of our supply. 




Courtesy of Miss Jessie D. Ebert. 
Fig. 70. — Cooking a cereal at the Big Tree School. 

Why are cereals valuable to us ? Recall what was 
said about wheat in the lessons on bread, and you can 
answer this question. Ground cereals are easy to pre- 
pare for eating, and this makes them welcome in a busy 
home. 



158 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



Ready cooked cereals. The ready-to-eat breakfast 
cereal is a quickly prepared food for the first meal of the 
day. A few of these are made in clean places, but they 
are sometimes manufactured from poor grain. The 
grit that we sometimes find, shows a lack of cleanliness in 
the process. It is a question, too, whether or not the 
starch has been heated long enough, and whether these 
prepared cereals can be chewed enough to make the grain 
digestible. It is better not to give them to young chil- 
dren. For older people, these prepared foods add variety 
to the diet, but they usually cost more than the home- 
cooked breakfast foods, even if one counts the cost of fuel. 
What happens to the cereal when we cook it ? Taste 
a grain of raw oatmeal, and you can mention several 
changes that the cooking makes. The raw grain is 

hard ; the cooked 
grain soft. You 
notice a change in 
the flavor ; and, 
when you look at 
the cooking oatmeal, 
you see that it is 
thickening as it 

Courtesy of Ohio State University . COOks. Remember 

From Extension Bulletin, Vol. IX, No. 4- 

Fig. 71.— A double boiler is used for steaming Wnat We Said about 
cereals. The lower part should be one third the Starch in the 
full of water. „ , 

potato, recall the 
way in which laundry starch thickens, and you can ex- 
plain this change. These changes are brought about 




THE HOME BREAKFAST 159 

by moisture, heat, and time. Our great-grandmothers 
made " hasty " pudding, but it is better for us to take 
plenty of time in cooking our grains. We find two kinds 
of cereals on the market, — the flaked and the granular. 
Weigh them, and you find the granular the heavier. 
Which will take more water ? We need enough water 
to soften the cereal, but not too much. If the cooked 
cereal is very stiff, use more water next time ; if it is too 
thin, use less water. 

Cooking cereals. 

What and how much. 1 part, by measure, of flaked cereal 
to 2 or 3 of water. 1 part granular cereal to 3 or 4 of water. 
1 cup of dry cereal will serve three or four people. Samp, 
cracked wheat, and coarse corn meal will take from 4 to 6 parts 
of water. Salt. A tablespoonful to a quart of water is an 
average amount. 

Utensils. A measuring cup ; a double boiler ; a fork. 

A picture of a double boiler is shown in Fig. 71. Or 
you can set one saucepan into another larger one, putting 
something in the bottom for the smaller pan to stand 
upon. 

How to make. Measure the cereal and water; put the 
water into the inner part of the double boiler with the salt. 
Have the lower part of the boiler ready, about half full of hot 
water; place the inner boiler directly upon the stove or over 
the flame. When the water is boiling rapidly, shake the 
cereal into the water from a cup so slowly that the water does 
not stop boiling. This is the first secret of a well-cooked 
cereal. The rapidly boiling water keeps the grains of cereal 
in motion. Thus they do not stick to the vessel nor to each 
other, and the heat reaches the starch in the grains equally. 



160 FOOD AND HEALTH 

If the grains begin to settle, shake the vessel gently ; but do 
not stir, even with a fork. Do this for about five minutes, 
or until you see a thickening of the mass, — so much that the 
separate grains do not settle. If toward the end of this stage 
there is danger of sticking, lift the mass with the fork, but 
do not stir it, as stirring will break the grains. This first 
process opens the starch grains. Place the inner part of 
the boiler in the outer part over boiling water and allow 
the cooking to continue for at least one hour. For this 
is the second secret of the perfect cereal, — a long cooking 
that softens the fiber and develops flavor. One cereal, 
advertised as being cooked in three minutes, is hardly eatable 
after that length of time, but is delicious at the end of two 
hours. If you* have a fireless cooker, put the cereal, in the 
double boiler, into the cooker overnight for the second 
stage. 

The uses of cold cereal. 

Never throw away cooked cereals. The cold cereal is 
useful in many ways. 

{a) Mold in small cups with dates or other fruit, and serve 
with sugar and cream for supper, — or for luncheon at 
school. 

(b) Cool corn-meal mush in a flat dish, cut it in slices when 
cold, and brown the slices in a frying pan with beef fat, or a 
butter substitute. Serve with sugar, molasses, or sirup for 
breakfast or supper. 

(c) Rice or hominy may be mixed with a beaten egg, 
molded into small cakes, and browned either in the frying 
pan or in the oven. 

{d) A small remaining portion of any cereal may be used 
to thicken soup. 

(e) Any cooked cereal may be used in muffins or even in 
yeast bread. 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 161 

Using Indian corn. As Americans we should be very 
proud of our Indian corn. The early settlers found it 
grown by the Indians. We have improved it, learned 
how to cultivate it, and made it one of our great crops. 
Have you heard of the " Corn Clubs/' for boys and for 
girls, too ? Do you know that the same grain is found 
in other parts of the world, where the sun is hot enough 
to ripen it ? It grows in South America, and it is an 
abundant food in Italy, where the people make a deli- 
cious porridge, " polenta." What is there more beauti- 
ful than a field of waving corn ? It might well be 
planted for its beauty in the flower garden, as it is some- 
times in England. 

Corn products. You can make a list of the different 
kinds of corn and some of the corn products, can you 
not ? Sweet corn, popcorn, and field corn, yellow and 
white. The cattle would call the stalks or leaves a corn 
product. The poultry like their corn whole sometimes. 
We prefer meal, or hominy, or samp. Have you ever 
heard of " hulled corn " ? This was much used in early 
days. The hard ripe kernels were soaked in a weak 
solution of lye (wood ashes) until the " hull " came off, 
and then the whole grains, were cooked. 

Something more about corn meal. We have two 
colors in corn meal, yellow and white. Some people 
prefer one and some the other. There are also two 
ways of grinding : the old method, between stones ; 
and the new process, by rollers. The old method seems 
to give a better flavor, because the oil of the germ is in 



162 FOOD AND HEALTH 

the meal ; but the new process meal keeps better. All 
the old-fashioned rules for cooking Indian meal have to 
be changed for the new kind, as the latter needs more 
wetting and more fat added. Perhaps you know where 
your meal is ground, and can tell if it is new or old 
fashioned. If it comes in a box with a label, it is 
probably new process. 

Corn or Indian meal mush. 

How to cook. This is cooked by the same method as the 
other cereals, except that the amount of water is larger and 
the first boiling should continue longer. The meal must be 
scattered slowly into the boiling water, or else be mixed 
first with cold water, as it lumps very easily. The second 
stage of the process should continue several hours. 

A word about rye and rye meal. We Americans are 
forgetting to use rye as our forefathers used it. This 
is a great pity. Rye is a most wholesome grain, ground 
into meal and made into " mush," Mixed with corn 
meal it gives us delicious yeast bread and quick breads. 
If rye is raised in your neighborhood, do supply your- 
selves with rye meal, and use it. Rye flour is easier to 
find for sale than rye meal, but it cannot be used in 
quite the same way. The rye flour will make a yeast 
bread. 

Cooking rice. Rice varies very much in quality 
and in the shape of the grain. Louisiana and Chinese 
rice are among those that have a firm and large grain, 
keeping its shape well when cooked. Inferior varieties 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 



163 



become too soft, and the finished product is pasty and 
poor in color and flavor. Much is said at present about 




From Hart's " Cereals in America." Published by the Orange Judd Company. 

Fig. 72. — Sections of a rice kernel : 1, bran coat ; 2, aleurone layer, 
containing valuable mineral salts; 3, cells packed with starch grains; 
4, germ, containing fat and mineral matter. 

the harmful effect of the polishing process upon the 
quality of the rice. An unpolished rice may sometimes 




Courtesy of New York College of Agriculture at 
Cornell University. 

Fig. 73. — Pure food regulations require the dealer 
to label coated rice. 

be found on the market, brownish in color and with a 
good flavor. 



164 FOOD AND HEALTH 

Boiled rice. 

Rice may be cooked in the double boiler by the same 
method as other cereals, by allowing i part of rice to 3 of 
water. The rice should be well washed in cold water. 

It will cook in from three quarters of an hour to an hour. 
Use milk sometimes in place of half of the water. 

The Chinese cook their rice in this way. A very large 
amount of water is used, — several quarts for one cup of 
rice, — and when the water is boiling violently the rice is 
scattered in very slowly. The boiling continues from twenty 
minutes to half an hour, or until the grains are tender. Then 
the water is drained off through a colander. The rice in the 
colander should then be placed where the remaining moisture 
will steam off. By this method some. food value is lost, but 
the grains of the rice stand out distinctly and are light and 
dry. The grains should be tested after boiling twenty 
minutes to see if they are tender. 

Fruit and rice or other cereal. When the rice is cooked in 
the double boiler, add a handful of stoned raisins and cook 
with the rice, or add a few soaked prunes cut in pieces. 

One morning Barbara Oakes tried putting raisins 
with the oatmeal. Once after she had been blue- 
berrying she put some berries into the breakfast food 
to surprise the family. Suppose you try some other 
berry. Look back at the lesson on fruit and see what 
else might go into the hot cereal. 

Eating cereal. We should eat our cereal slowly, 
instead of bolting it. An easy way to make oneself do 
this is to eat it with toast or a cracker. 

When shall we cook the cereal ? On account of the 
fact that cereal should be cooked a long time, it is best 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 



165 



not to wait until morning to cook it. In winter, when 
the fire is kept in overnight, the first cooking can be 
done at supper time, and the boiler left standing on 
the range or stove, at the back. In summer, the cereal 




Courtesy of Ohio State University. From Homemakers' Reading Courses, Vol. I, No. 

Fig. 74. — The breakfast cereal may be cooked overnight in a fireless cooker. 
This cooker is fitted with valves which permit the escape of steam, and 
prevent water from condensing in' the cooker. 

can be thoroughly cooked the day before, and reheated 
at breakfast time. There are still other ways. Have 
you ever heard of the fireless cooker and the Atkinson 
cooker ? We shall study these in another lesson. 



EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Weigh a cup of flaked cereal and a cup of granular. 

2. Make a list of the flaked and granular cereals, that you 
know about, with the amount of water for each one. 



166 FOOD AND HEALTH 

3. Does anything in your study of physiology explain why 
you should eat the cooked cereal slowly ? 

4. How much corn meal shall you need to make mush for a 
family of six ? Of eight ? 

5. Weigh the contents of a box of ready-to-eat cereal. Weigh 
the same measure of oatmeal ; of corn meal ; of rice. 

6. Which is the least expensive ? Can you tell why ? 

7. Mollie Stark used one of the recipes in this lesson with a 
foamy sauce for dessert at dinner (Lesson 13). Which one did 
she select ? 

Lesson 19 

the value of eggs as a food 

What is there for you to learn about selling eggs and about 
using them at home ? 

It may be that you help your mother in raising poul- 
try, and sell the eggs ; and, of course, you have enough 
for home use, anyway. 

Eggs for market. There are many pamphlets printed 
about poultry and eggs for profit. You may have read 
about the Poultry Clubs in some of our states, and perhaps 
you are a member. Some of these pamphlets are kept on 
the book shelves at the Pleasant Valley School, and the 
pupils try at home some of the plans suggested. The 
important things for poultry are a clean house, clean 
drinking water, good food, litter to scratch in for the 
winter, a " run " for good weather and for summer, 
fresh air, and dry feet. In a tightly shut henhouse we 
cannot have healthy hens that will lay. They need 
fresh air, but, as their bodies are about eight degrees 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 



167 



hotter than ours, they do not need to be kept warm. 
The food that hens require is very much like our own ; 
grain, some meat food, green stuff, plus something to 
make the eggshells hard. If you want the eggs to 




Courtesy of Miss Laura B. Whittemore. 

Fig. 75. — Miss Field and her flock of White Wyandottes. 

have the flavor that customers call " perfectly deli- 
cious, " you must be careful to give them no table scraps 
that have a strong flavor. Miss Field, the young 
woman in Pleasant Valley who sells eggs, never gives 



i68 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



table scraps to her laying hens. She feeds the scraps to 
the cockerels that will be sold for broilers. 

Selling fresh eggs. Miss Field is very careful to 
send only fresh eggs to market. Her commission mer- 




Courtesy of Miss Laura B. Whillemore. 

Fig. 76. — Beauty Bright. The 
openings in the houses are closed 
by shutters covered with heavy 
cotton cloth. 



Courtesy of Miss Laura B. Whiltemore. 

Fig. 77. — Jack, one of Miss Field's 
cocks, with his well-ventilated house at 
the back. 



chant wrote her that he never tested her eggs because 
he could depend upon them. 

The Woman's Club asked Miss Field to give a talk 
about her poultry raising because they knew that she 
was practical, and that she made it pay. She warned 
them about taking batches of eggs of all ages to the store, 
and reminded them that when we buy eggs we do not 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 169 

like to find an old or a cooked egg or a small chicken, 
at thirty cents or more a dozen. Miss Field said that, if 
there were eggs that did not hatch in the incubator, 
she always opened them, and used them at home if 
they had not spoiled ; but that she would never think of 
selling them. She also said selling direct to the con- 
sumer paid her better than selling on commission. 

Eggs should be stored in a cool place, and on the way 
to market should be kept out of the sun. The picture 
(Fig. 78) shows that the weather is hot, because the 
family is using an umbrella, but there is none over the 
eggs ! 

Another important point is a clean nest for the hen. 
The shell of the egg is porous ; so, if we wash off the 
dirt, we may hasten the spoiling of the egg. See if you 
can reason this out. 

Here is one odd little point about selling eggs that 
Miss Field mentioned. In some places white eggs 
bring a higher price ; in some cities, brown. You must 
find out about your market, and choose the kind of hen 
to suit. In New York City white eggs always are 
quoted higher than brown, and cost more at the grocery ; 
although, when you sell direct to a customer, it does not 
seem to matter. 

The cost of eggs. When we raise our own food it 
is not easy to know just what it costs in money. If 
we count as the money value of eggs what we can get 
for them, that will help us to compare them with other 
food, at least, and to judge whether to eat all or to sell 



i 7 o FOOD AND HEALTH 

them, or to eat some and sell some. Of course, they 
do take the place of ready money sometimes, and so 




U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Animal Industry. 
Bulletin 141. 

Fig. 78. — Taking eggs to market. Eggs exposed 
to the sun during an eight-mile drive at a tem- 
perature of 106 . 

we change them for some other kind of food. The 
question is, whether we do this wisely, always. 
Remember that the food value is as follows : 

8 eggs = 1 quart good milk = i pound steak, about. 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 171 

If the eggs are 24 cents per dozen, and the steak 24 
cents per pound, 1 what food value is lost if you change 
the eggs for the steak ? Do you see what money value 
is lost, as well ? Of course, the change gives you 
variety. On the other hand, when good eggs bring a 
high price, it is to your advantage to sell, and use fewer 
in cake and puddings at home. We must remember 
that cooked by themselves, and served in place of meat, 
they are valuable, especially for little children and 
invalids. 

Food value of eggs once more. Remember that as 
the tiny chicken grows inside the shell, its food is 
there, with something taken from the shell in the way 
of mineral matter ; and the baby chick comes from its 
shell, quite well grown, with energy enough to pick for 
its next meal. Eggs are one of the body-building foods, 
and for this reason are good for growing children, in- 
valids, and people who are getting well, and who have 
lost flesh. 

Are hard-cooked eggs digestible r Yes, if eaten 
properly, an egg, hard boiled or fried, is digestible. 
You need not be afraid to serve fried eggs ; but you 
must remember that the hard egg and the egg with fat 
will take longer to digest. So, if some one at home has 
a rather feeble digestion, a soft or raw egg is better than 
the fried ; *and better for the little children. 

1 Prices of steak per pound in a country village, Connecticut, August, 
1915 : Shoulder steak, 18 cents; round, short, and sirloin, 24 cents; 
porterhouse, 32 cents. "Western" beef. 



1 72 FOOD AND HEALTH 

What happens to an egg when it is cooked ? If you 
break an egg into a saucepan of cold water, and heat 
the water slowly, what changes can you see in the egg ? 
Try it and see. There comes a change in color, first, 
in the white of the egg, before the water boils at all ; 
and when the water boils, the yolk and white become 
hard. If you leave the egg long enough in water below 
the boiling point, both the yolk and white harden, the 
yolk being " mealy " and the white firm so that it can 
be cut. The cooking does not change the food value of 
the egg. 

What do you gather from this little study of the 
cooking egg ? 

If you want an egg to be jelly-like, it must be cooked 
below the boiling point of water. If you like it firmer, 
cook it in boiling water, without being afraid that it 
will be indigestible. This is the latest advice from 
scientific people. 

Beating eggs. How convenient it is that the white 
of egg is elastic, and that we can stretch it by beating, 
and can catch the air in it, and use the air for making 
muffins and cakes " light." The yolk becomes creamy ; 
a bit of yolk in the white will keep the white from being 
stiff. Can you break an egg and drop the white in a 
bowl without a speck of the yolk ? 

There is one other important point about the yolk 
and the white. Do you know how the yolk hangs in 
the shell ? By a string. Look for the string. Do you 
know why the hen turns the egg over ? If the egg lies 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 173 

on one side, the yolk drops. If the egg is shaken, the 
string breaks, and so when we send eggs by mail or 
express they must be firmly packed. 

Some other materials to be used with eggs for break- 
fast and other meals. We have spoken of dried beef in 
Lesson 17. If the meat for hash is rather too small in 
quantity, put the chopped meat with some bread crumbs 
in the bottom of a baking dish, break enough eggs to 
cover on top of the meat, and set the dish in the oven. 
Eggs can be made into dishes with potato, or bread or 
bread crumbs, with cold meat, fish, and cheese. Look 
back at the lesson on scalloped dishes, and plan an egg 
scallop for breakfast or supper, with what you have left 
in the house from dinner. 

Eating raw eggs. A good quick lunch. An egg, 
swallowed whole, followed by a cracker, is a " quick 
lunch " that is wholesome ; and it is sometimes con- 
venient to be able to take an egg in this way. A 
sprinkling of salt upon it makes it taste better. 

Whipped eggs. 

What and how much. 

1 egg 

1 teaspoonful of sugar 
a shake of salt 
. some flavoring 
f cup of milk 

How to make. Beat the yolk and white separately. Add 
to the yolk a teaspoonful of sugar, a shake of salt, some 
flavoring, and f of a cup of milk. Beat the white gently 



i 7 4 FOOD AND HEALTH 

into this mixture and serve in a glass. The flavoring may be 
a quarter of a teaspoonful of vanilla, or a tablespoonful 
of orange juice. This is sometimes served to an invalid 
who can take milk, and is an agreeable luncheon for any one. 
If milk does not agree with one, a larger amount of fruit 
juice may be used with the addition of some water, possibly 
carbonated. The white alone is given in cases of severe ill- 
ness, mixed with a small amount of water and fruit juice, 
if the physician permits the latter. This is sometimes the 
only food that can be retained by an invalid. 

Jellied or coddled eggs. 

See that the shells are whole and clean. If the eggs are 
just taken from the refrigerator, lay them in warm water 
a few minutes. Make ready a double boiler, with the 
lower part half full of boiling water. Put the number 
of eggs that you wish to use into the inner boiler. Cover 
with water that has just stopped boiling. Put on the boiler 
cover. Stand the boiler where the water below will no longer 
boil. The eggs will be done in from six to eight minutes. 

See if you can think of another way of doing this same 
experiment. 

Boiled eggs. 

Put one egg at a time from a tablespoon into boiling water. 
Allow the water to boil for three or four minutes, depending 
upon the preference of those served. Remove the eggs, and 
serve at once. 

The hard-boiled egg should remain in the boiling water 
half an hour. 

Poached eggs. 

Make ready a frying pan by setting muffin rings in it and 
filling it about half full of gently simmering water, with a 



THE HOME BREAKFAST i 75 

teaspoonful of salt dissolved in it. Break the eggs one at a 
time into a saucer, and slip each egg carefully into a muffin 
ring. See that the pan stands where the water is just below 
the boiling point, for rapidly bubbling water breaks the eggs. 
When the white begins to set, pour the hot water gently 
over the tops of the eggs from a spoon. Cook until the 
white is firm. Slip a griddlecake turner under the egg, 
lift it gently, and place it upon a piece of buttered toast 
which you have ready on a hot plate or platter, and remove 
the ring. 

An easier method, resembling the poached egg, is to break 
the egg raw into a small buttered cup or "patty," standing 
the cups in a pan of water just below the boiling point, the 
pan being on the top of the stove or in the oven. Each egg 
should have a sprinkling of salt, and may have a bit of butter, 
and a shake of pepper. Cover the pan. This process is 
longer than the other, and the eggs must be watched to see 
when the process is complete. 

Baked eggs. 

This has already been suggested with chopped meat. The 
eggs can be baked with bread crumbs only, in a buttered baking 
dish with crumbs underneath and above. Sprinkle on some 
grated cheese before baking, or lay on thin slices of cheese, 
and you have a "hearty" breakfast dish. 

Preserving eggs for winter use. When the hens 
are laying well, and eggs are cheap, it is a good plan 
to store away some for use later. Since the shells 
are porous, eggs take the taste of sawdust or of any- 
thing in which they are placed that has a taste or a 
smell. For this reason we must coat eggs to keep them. 



176 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



Even in cold storage, eggs change flavor after a 
while ; and, of course, we never sell preserved eggs 
as fresh eggs. The easiest way is to pack the eggs 
down in coarse salt, but water glass is the better pre- 
servative. 

Buy the water glass at the druggist's. With it make 
a mixture with water, one tenth water glass to nine 




Courtesy of Katherine E. Braithwaite. 
Fig. 79. — Sallie and her White Wyandotte babies. 

tenths water. Use large stone jars. Fill the jars with 
the eggs, selecting those without cracks ; pour the solu- 
tion over them ; cover the jar, and set it away in a cool 
place. This costs only a fraction of a cent for each egg. 
The eggs when taken out must be thoroughly washed 
before cooking. The flavor is good, but it is dishonest 
to sell them as fresh-laid eggs. 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 177 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. What do you know to be good for your poultry at home ? 

2. Why is it necessary to coat or cover eggs in order to preserve 
them ? 

3. Compare the cost of eggs and meat in your town, and see 
which is more economical to use. 

4. Do you know how to "candle" eggs, and what does the can- 
dling show ? 

5. Can you explain to any one who asks you the difference in 
digestibility between a raw egg and a hard-boiled egg ? 

Lesson 20 
quick breads 
How can we make and serve quick breads ? 

" Quick " breads may be mixed and baked the day 
before, and warmed over for breakfast. 

Quick breads take less time in the making than yeast 
bread. Then, too, we like a change in our bread foods. 
Mollie Stark's grandmother could remember seeing 
baking done in the brick oven once a week. A fire was 
made inside the oven, the ashes were swept out when 
the fire died down, and the food was cooked when the 
bricks or stones of the oven had cooled a little. Cake 
and pies were baked first ; then, white bread ; and last 
of all the brown bread, beans, and Indian pudding were 
put in, to be taken out for Sunday morning breakfast. 
(Frontispiece.) This baking was an important event and 
took all day ; enough cake, pies, and bread were baked 
for a week. How convenient, then, between times to 



i 7 8 FOOD AND HEALTH 

• 
bake johnnycake or hoecake on a board before the open 

fire, or to make quick biscuit with sour milk and salera- 
tus and to bake them in the bake kettle that stood over 
the glowing coals with other coals of wood put on top 
of the iron cover. Mrs. Stark, the grandmother, was 
delighted when Miss James asked her one day to show 
the cooking class how to make a johnnycake like that 
she used to eat in her old home in Rhode Island. There 
they use white corn meal, as people are likely to do in 
the South, and the johnnycake is something like the 
southern hoecake. The class went one afternoon to 
the pleasant old homestead, where the grandmother 
was one of the happiest and busiest members of the 
household. Mrs. Stark explained that the name johnny- 
cake is given to different corn-meal breads in different 
places, and that she is always careful to explain that 
hers are : 

Old-fashioned Rhode Island johnnycakes. 

What. White (or yellow) corn meal, boiling water, and salt. 

How much. Mrs. Stark says that it is of no use to try 
to give exact measures, because different kinds of meal take 
up different quantities of water. There must be enough 
water to soften the meal so that it will drop from a large 
spoon, but not run out. 

Utensils. A bowl and spoon, and a griddle, with a broad 
knife for turning the cakes. 

How to make. Mix the salt with the meal in the bowl. 
Pour on the boiling water. Mrs. Stark poured it from the 
teakettle, but said that you could pour it from a saucepan. 
She stirred the meal with one hand, holding the kettle in the 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 179 

other, pouring on the water until the meal was all softened 
but not very wet. Perhaps you can find somebody's grand- 
mother to show you how. 

The griddle was hot and greased with beef fat. 

Mrs. Stark dropped a large spoonful at a time upon the 
hot griddle, and with a knife made each cake into a smooth 
oval about \ inch thick. She let the cakes brown on one side 
and then on the other. Then she set the griddle on the back 
of the stove, where the cakes would cook slowly. At the end 
of about half an hour, each cake had two crisp, brown crusts, 
easily split apart with a knife, ready to be buttered and eaten. 
While the cakes were cooking, Mrs. Stark told stories of old 
days ; and, when the cakes were eaten, the girls all declared 
that they were sweeter and better than popcorn, and that 
they couldn't be better baked on a board ; but Mrs. Stark in- 
sisted that they were. She explained that the johnnycake 
is more digestible than a more quickly cooked griddlecake, 
on account of the longer cooking. 

An exhibit of quick breads. Miss James suggested 
that the Pleasant Valley School should have an exhibit 
of their home work, and that muffins and biscuits, 
among other things, would keep fresh long enough to 
look well. Here are a few of the rules that they used 
for their quick breads : 

Popovers or puffovers. 

What and how much. 

Flour 1 pint 

Milk 1 pint 

Eggs l 3 

Salt \ teaspoonful 

1 Some rules give two eggs only. 



180 FOOD AND HEALTH 

Utensils. For baking, heavy earthen cups, hot and greased. 

How to make. Sift together the salt and flour. Stir to- 
gether the milk and eggs. Pour these slowly into the flour, 
stirring and beating as you go. 

Special points. The liquid must be poured very slowly into 
the flour to prevent lumping. A large Dover egg beater is 
convenient for beating out lumps, if any occur. 

It is the steam formed in baking that lightens the pufFovers, 
and the mixture should be stirred only long enough to make it 
smooth. The mixture can stand overnight, and still make 
light pufFovers in the morning. 

Pour the batter in the hot cups, having each cup two thirds 
full. For baking, the popovers should be put into an in- 
tensely hot oven for the first stage of the baking — and then 
the oven must be cooled. This first stage crusts the top ; then 
the force of the steam pushes upthetop; and the muffin "pops" 
or "puffs" over. The more moderate heat cooks the sides and 
the bottom, and makes an agreeable crust. The perfect puff- 
over is hollow. Three quarters of an hour is the average time 
of baking. If at the end of that time the oven door is set ajar, 
and the popovers allowed to remain longer, they are improved, 
coming from the oven stiff and crisp with a rich brown color, 
rather than soft and underdone. Serve sometimes with a 
pudding sauce as a dessert, or open and fill with stewed fruit. 

Muffins. 

What and how much. 

Flour I pint 

Baking powder 3 teaspoonfuls 

Salt \ teaspoonful 

Eggs 2 or 1 

Milk \\ cup 

Butter or butter substitute 1 tablespoonful 

Sugar, if desired 1 tablespoonful 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 



181 



Utensils. For baking use greased muffin pan. Bake half 
an hour. 

How to make. Sift together the dry ingredients. Beat the 
eggs, without separating the yolk and white, and stir the eggs 
and milk together. Pour the liquid gradually into the flour, 
first stirring, then beating. Melt the butter or other shorten- 
ing, and beat it 
into the batter. 

This recipe may 
be varied in many 
ways : 

(a) Use \ cup 
cooked cereal in 
place of an equal 
quantity of flour. 

1 j j. | . , Courtesy of Department of Foods and Cookery, 

Will yOU Change Teachers College, Columbia University. 

the amount of wet- F IG - 80. — A plate of muffins for breakfast or 

ting ? sup P en 

(b) One cup fine white corn meal, or \ cup yellow meal, 
may be used in place of equal quantities of flour. Corn meal 
absorbs more water than white flour. 

What change in the wetting ? 

The oven should be the temperature for bread, and the 
baking at least J of an hour. 

(c) One cup graham or rye meal may be used in place of 
an equal quantity of flour. 




Baking powder or sour milk and soda biscuit. 



What and how much. 
Flour 

Baking powder 
Salt 

Butter or butter substitute 
Milk 



1 pint 

3 teaspoonfuls 

I teaspoonful 

1 or 2 tablespoonfuls 

I scant cup 



182 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



If you use sour milk and soda, take a scant teaspoonful of 
soda. 

Utensils. For shaping, use molding board, rolling pin, and 
biscuit cutter. 

For baking, use an iron sheet or pan sprinkled with flour. 
Test the oven with a ten-second count or golden brown paper, in 
five minutes. This 
would be about 
425 °F. Bake from 
twenty minutes 
to half an hour. 

How to make. 
Sift together the 
dry ingredients. 
Cut in or chop in 
the butter. Add 
the wetting slowly. 

To shape. Dust 
the board with 
flour, turn out the 
dough, dredge with 

flour, pat into a firm mass, and then pat or lightly roll out to 
\ inch thickness. Cut out with a cutter dipped in flour. (A 
small glass or the top of a round tin can may be used.) 

It saves time to mix the biscuit soft enough to drop from 
a spoon. 

Variations. Add 1 egg. This makes a delicious biscuit. 
Sprinkle the top with granulated sugar, and spice. Dried 
currants, washed and dredged with flour, may be laid on the 
top. 

Increase the butter to two or three tablespoonfuls and de- 
crease the wetting; the mixture becomes shortcake. This is 
the mixture to use for the true strawberry shortcake. Many 
other fruits may be used, both uncooked and cooked. 




Fig. 



Courtesy of Department of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College, 
Columbia University. 

— A plate of baking powder biscuit, light 
and baked well. 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 183 

The class had learned how to grease their muffin pans 
and cups neatly, to fill each little pan or cup half full, 
and to bake them in a quicker oven than for loaf bread. 

A table for baking will be found on page 296. 

We shall not learn to bake properly until we have 
thermometers for our ovens ; no other test can be 
exact. A good general rule in baking is this : with 
batters and doughs, the larger the portion, the slower 
the oven. A cooky can be baked in a " quicker," or 
hotter, oven than a muffin, and a muffin or small cake in 
a quicker oven than a loaf. Cakes that have many 
eggs in them, like sponge cake and angel cake made 
only with the whites, are more tender baked in a slow 
oven. The reason for this you will understand because 
we have studied the egg in Lesson 19. 

On the day of the exhibit the quick breads were 
prettily displayed upon plates on a long table, and the 
recipes were written on the board. Miss Travers was 
there ; but before she began her talk, the pupils them- 
selves performed the experiments given in Marjorie's 
notebook, page 298, and gave little talks themselves 
about baking powder. One girl talked while another 
performed the experiment, and what they said was 
something like this : 

Making quick breads light. We can do this, partly, 
by beating air into eggs and putting the eggs into the 
batter. In popovers the steam pufTs up the crust. 
But why do we use sour milk and soda, or molasses and 
soda, or cream of tartar and soda, or baking powder ? 



1 84 FOOD AND HEALTH 

Agnes Groves will pour some boiling water on a mixture 
of cream of tartar and soda. See how it bubbles ! If 
we catch the gas in a small bottle and touch a match 
to it, see, — the match goes out. It is carbon dioxide gas. 
Here is a saucer that held a teaspoonful of cream of 
tartar and % teaspoonful of soda dissolved in water, and 
the water has evaporated. See the white powder left 
behind. It does not taste like the cream of tartar nor 
the soda ; and you could never guess what it is ! It is 
Rochelle salts ; and so every time we eat a biscuit made 
light with cream of tartar, we take a little dose of 
Rochelle salts. 1 

This is what the chemists say : whenever you put 
soda, or bicarbonate of soda, with an acid, this gas is 
formed, and some substance is left behind in the food, — 
one kind of thing from sour milk, another from cream 
of tartar, and so on. Some of the best baking powders 
are made with cream of tartar and soda with a little 
starch mixed in to keep the two substances from work- 
ing on each other. An acid phosphate powder also is 
on the market. 

The Mothers' Club and other guests were much 
pleased with the little talks and the experiments. Then 
Miss Travers v was ready to answer questions. Here are 
a few of them : 

Question. What kind of baking powder would you buy ? 
Answer. Not the cheapest, for they may have alum instead of 
cream of tartar, and too much starch or flour. 

1 Rochelle salts is a medicine. 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 185 

Question. Is it cheaper to buy or to make the baking powder ? 

Answer. It may cost a little less to make it, but in the factory, 
where it is put up, everything is weighed exactly and thoroughly 
mixed; you get a better product and it is just as economical. 

Question. Isn't quick bread just as wholesome as yeast bread ? 

Answer. Not when it is eaten just baked, and not for all the 
time. 

Question. But people always want quick breads hot. What 
can you do ? 

Answer. Try reheating them. This makes the crust a little 
crisper, and the crumb drier, and less pasty to be digested. Then, 
this saves work at the time of the meal, often. If they seem too 
dry, moisten the crust a little before reheating in the oven. 

Question. I used some canned molasses with soda for my gin- 
gerbread, and the bread was heavy. What was the matter ? 

Answer. Canned molasses has no acid in it, and you should use 
baking powder with it. 

The exhibit was ended by serving the quick breads 
and simple cakes with cocoa for refreshment. Some 
of the biscuits were used for little shortcakes ; that is, 
were split and filled with some fruit that the girls had 
canned. Thin baking-powder biscuit make very nice 
sandwiches to serve at any entertainment. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Try the experiments on page 298. 

2. Explain how baking powder makes a batter light. 

3. Explain why puffovers do puff over. 

4. Make tests with pieces of white paper, and paste them in 
your cook book, with the time against each one. 

5. Explain why an oven for cookies can be hotter than for a 
loaf. 



186 FOOD AND HEALTH 

Lesson 21 

the kitchen 

How can we make the kitchen comfortable and pretty, pleasant 
to work in for breakfast, dinner, or supper ? 

One warm, pleasant day, when the girls' club had its 
meeting at Marjorie Allen's home, one of the members 
who went into the kitchen to help make the lemonade, 
exclaimed : 

" Isn't this the pleasantest room in the whole 
house ? " 

Is our own kitchen at home so comfortable and at- 
tractive that our friends can say something like this ? 

The Pleasant Valley girls had the chance to furnish 
a kitchen, beginning with the walls and floor, in the 
Ellen H. Richards House (page 289) ; but at home we 
seldom can do so much as this. However, if we have a 
plan, we can do one new thing at a time, and make 
changes slowly. If our kitchen is small, it saves steps ; 
if it is large, it is airy ; and in either case we will make 
the best of it. 

" May-haves " and " must-haves " in the kitchen. 
We may have the kitchen pretty and we must have it 
clean ; and it ought to be convenient in saving steps and 
in making the work easier to do. 

A pretty kitchen. Marjorie Allen persuaded her 
mother to let her help plan the doing over of the 
kitchen. They put a soft shade of buff paint on the 
wall, because paint is cleaner than paper ; and the 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 



187 




Drawn by La Mont A. Warner. 
Fig. 82. — "Isn't this the pleasantest room in the whole house?" A corner of 

Mrs. Allen's kitchen. 

floor was painted brown. Mrs. Allen had made a 
braided mat, in the winter days and evenings, of soft 
brown and buff with a touch of blue in it. There was a 












Drawn by La Mont A . Warner. 
Fig. 83. — Another corner of Mrs. Allen's kitchen. Mrs. Allen made a braided 
mat in the winter days. 

188 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 189 

dull blue-and-white cushion in a rocking chair, and some 
old-fashioned blue-and-white dishes on the shelf. The 
window shelf at the south window held some plants ; 
and they planned to have a vine outside this window for 
shade in summer. 

A clean kitchen. In speaking of beauty, we are not 
able to leave out the thought of having things that are 
easily cleaned, you see. A woven " rag," or braided, 
mat can be taken outdoors, scrubbed with a brush and 
soapsuds, and rinsed with clear water thrown on from 
a pail or hose ; or can be washed in a tub. 1 It is a good 
rule to have nothing in any part of the kitchen that is 
not washable. 

The floor. It may be smoothed off, and painted or 
oiled. A floor covering that is expensive at first, but that 
lasts for many years, is an inlaid linoleum or cork car- 
pet ; it is warm and soft to the feet, keeps out damp, and 
is easy to keep clean. This is something for which to 
save up money, if you believe in cleanliness and com- 
fort. Begin with having it in the pantry. Let it lie 
on the floor to stretch from use for a month or two ; 
then cement it along the edges. This ought to keep 
out mice and ants. 

The walls. Paint is the very cleanest and best finish. 
It costs less in the end than paper because it lasts longer. 

The sink. Whatever the sink is made of, have it 
open underneath. This is the only way to be sure that 

1 Rag rugs and strips are in fashion again. Mollie Stark's grand- 
mother makes them for her friends. 



190 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



it is really clean around the sink. If there is a closet 
underneath, it may be damp, and we may " tuck away " 
things, and then feel too tired to clean the closet out. 

Here is a picture (Fig. 84) of a sink hung from the 
wall. This is made of enameled iron. If the sink is 
hung in this way, it can be placed high enough so that 
Mother's back is in proper position. On page 136 is a 




Courtesy of J. Mott Co. 
Fig. 84. — An enameled iron sink hung from the wall. 

picture of a sink that is too low. When the sink rests 
upon legs, these come of a standard height, incon- 
venient, and harmful for tall people. If you have a 
wooden sink, plan to change it for something else as 
soon as you can. Plain iron is better than wood. 

Saving steps. One day, after school, Marjorie Allen 
with a foot rule in her hand began to follow her mother 
round the kitchen, measuring her footsteps behind her, 
instead of helping with the supper as usual. Then she 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 



191 



OINING ROOM 



1\\ 



TABLE 



< x 



•157 PANTRY 

/ 






U. S. Department of Agriculture, Farmers' 
Bulletin, No. 607. 



Fig. 85. — A large kitchen with 
venient arrangement. 



drew a plan of the kitchen, 

with lines to show where 

and how far her mother 

walked in getting supper, 

like Fig. 85. Mrs. Allen 

was amused at first, but, 

when Marjorie told her 

how many miles she 

traveled a year, she was 

interested ; and after sup- 
per, they all sat down to 

calculate what could be 

saved by changing some 

things in the kitchen. All 

the girls had been reading at school the bulletin about 

the Home Kitchen ; * and, 
although Miss James 
warned them not to trouble 
their mothers that night by 
turning the kitchen "topsy- 
turvy," they could hardly 
wait until Saturday to try 
some change. See if you 
can save steps by changing 
movable things about at 
home ; of course, if your 
mother is willing. 

1 See U. S. Department of Agri- 
culture, Farmers' Bulletin, No. 607. 



DINING ROOM 



A 



~Z> J ' 



iV 



■A PANTRY 



r s 
I s 



If 



U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farmers' 
Bulletin, No. 607. 

86. — The same kitchen has been 
improved. 



1 92 FOOD AND HEALTH 

A kitchen cabinet. You are fortunate if you have a 
large and well-aired pantry for keeping food ; but it 
saves time and strength to have some materials at hand 
all the time. 

When Marjorie began to talk about buying a cabinet, 
her brothers decided to make something that would do 
nearly as well. Figure 83 shows what they did in the 
way of putting shelves around the kitchen table. The 
flour and sugar are near by, you see ; and all the little 
things, too. Then they put casters on another smaller 
table, and nailed on strips of wood around the top. This 
was for running dishes and food in and out of the dining 
room, kitchen, and pantry ; for their rooms were large. 

Cooking utensils. For good work you need a few well- 
selected utensils. Enameled ware and aluminum are 
among the more expensive kinds, but both are service- 
able. Steel or iron are materials that wear well and are 
useful in frying pans especially. There is nothing 
better than a well-worn iron spider which has become 
perfectly smooth from years of use. If you have one 
of these that you think of throwing away because the 
under part is encrusted with a black covering, give the 
pan a thorough boiling in a solution of lye, washing 
soda, or soft soap, and then keep it among your kitchen 
treasures. 

Water in the kitchen. John Stark said on another 
day : " Father, I want to talk to you seriously. What 
would you think of going without the addition to the 
barn another year, and having a force pump in the cellar 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 



i93 




Courtesy of New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. 
Fig. 87. — For good work you need a few well-selected kitchen utensils. 

so that mother can have hot and cold running water in 
the kitchen, and we all can have a bathroom ? " What 
do you think his father said ? He was a little doubtful 
about the school where they studied such things ; then 
he remembered that at the Farmers' Institute he had 
heard another farmer talk about just this thing. And 
what did he do ? He wrote to the State University and 
asked for advice about water on the farm. They gave 
him some practical help, and now the Stark home has 
a good water supply. 

Running water, what a blessing ! If you have a 
spring of good water on high land and the water can be 
piped into the house, you are wealthy. Sometimes, 
several neighbors can do this together. Happy is the 



194 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



small town that has a pure supply and can pipe it into 

the village ! 

What are some simpler methods that can be used on 

the farm ? 

Here is a drawing (Fig. 88) of what one family did in 

Pleasant Valley. When crops fail, and business is poor, 
we cannot put in expensive water- 
works. As the water in the Groves' 
well was a little hard for washing, 
they always had rain barrels for 
water from the roof, being careful to 
let the rain wash off the roof before 
it was turned into the barrels. This 
picture shows what Mr. Groves de- 
vised one day when the family was 
talking about saving steps. He ran 
a short pipe into the kitchen from the 
barrel, with a spigot on the kitchen 
end of the pipe. The pipe was ar- 
ranged so that the barrel could be 
taken off and down to be cleaned. 
Also there was a netting over the top 
of the barrel. Why ? To keep out 
mosquitoes, of course. This plan 

Drawn by La Mont A. Warner, x x 

uZ h er r s uy ome,ColumMa does not work in a very dry summer, 
Fig. 88.— Mr. Groves put but Mrs. Groves found it a help, and 

up a rain barrel to catch i i i i 11 

water from the roof, s ° sn e had another one put by the 
and ran a short pipe s h ec [ wne re the washing was done in 

into the kitchen from 

the barrel. warm weather. 1 he next step was 




THE HOME BREAKFAST 



195 







^^j^ 


ft ■ 

t-|-33a 4 




«# 


iew 


w 

11 


1 "lif!" 


■ 




t j^g 



a cemented rain-water cis- 
tern, with a pump in the 
kitchen. 

A tank in the attic. 
More convenient still is a 
water tank in the attic, 
with a good hand pump 
that pumps the water 
from a well or cistern. 
One tank of this kind 
needs many strokes a day 
to keep it full, but the 
family prefer this exercise 
to carrying water in and 
out in pails. A windmill 
or a steam pump is the 
next advance in way of 
improvement, and elec- 
tricity is best of all. Perhaps, some day, we all can 
have it. 

Some other ways of saving strength. Machines in 
the kitchen save just as much as machines for farm 
work. We have seen pictures of the bread machine, 
and of the Dover egg beater. A meat chopper, screwed 
to the table, is quick to use and easy to wash. There 
are some things for sale that are foolish to buy, — like 
an egg opener that an agent carried about Pleasant 
Valley one day. But there are many useful devices 
that you want to plan to buy, when you know that they 



Year Book of Department of Agriculture, 1914. 

Fig. 89. — A water system with a wind- 
mill furnishes running water to the 
house and barns. 



196 FOOD AND HEALTH 

are good. You can have some problems in arithmetic 
and physics that will help you to understand why a 
machine is a saving. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

| I. Examine a Dover egg beater. Count the cogs on the large 
wheel and the small. How many times will one turn of the large 
wheel turn the small wheel ? The handle turns the large wheel, 
and the small wheel the blades. How many "beats" will the white 
of egg have in the bowl for one turn of the handle ? 

Beat the white of a fresh egg in a bowl with a fork, until the 
white is so dry that you can turn the bowl upside down, and count 
the number of beats as you work. 

Now, here is your problem. How many beats do you save if 
you use the Dover ? 

2. The Pleasant Valley home-making class studied the work- 
ing of a pump and a "windlass" for a well, in their Physics, to find 
out how they worked. Suppose you do. 

3. Mr. Stark put in a windmill to pump water into a tank for 
the house and barn and garden. How does the wind pump water ? 

4. Draw a plan of your own kitchen at home, like the one in 
Fig. 85. Can steps be saved ? 

REVIEW 

1. Do you like the same breakfast in summer as in winter? 
Why not ? 

2. Can you tell why a farmer takes a more hearty breakfast 
than a man who works in an office all day ? 

3. Give three different ways of making coffee. Which way 
would you prefer to use for breakfast ? 

4. What are some meat dishes that are not expensive and are 
easily prepared for breakfast ? 

5. Is there any reason for cooking cereals ? 



THE HOME BREAKFAST 197 

6. How do you want your oatmeal cooked for breakfast ? 

7. What is polished rice ? 

8. In what ways have you seen rice boiled ? 

9. Do you know any way to use rye and corn products as food ? 

10. When eggs are plentiful, how can you preserve them for use 
in the winter ? 

11. Tell how you will have eggs cooked differently every morn- 
ing for a week. 

12. If you want to raise eggs to sell,, what things about eggs 
will you remember ? 

13. Do you know how to make popovers ? 

14. What makes quick breads light ? 

15. Can you make any suggestions for saving steps in the 
kitchen ? 

16. Plan a kitchen that can easily be kept clean. 

17. How may one have running water in a kitchen ? 

18. What machine for saving strength would you like, to have 
in a kitchen ? 




CHAPTER V 



THE HOME DINNER 



Lesson 22 



MENUS FOR DINNER 



How does dinner differ from the other meals ? 

" Everybody eats more at dinner/' was the answer to 
this question given by one member of the household 
arts class in the Pleasant Valley School. This may 
not be true always, but it is true that we usually make 
dinner a meal where we have soup, perhaps a meat dish 
like a roast, or a piece of boiled meat, more vegetables 
than at breakfast and supper, and some sweet dish that 
we call "dessert"; and even if we do not eat more, 
the food itself is " heartier." 

Here are three plans for dinners, 

193 



THE HOME DINNER 



199 





DINNER PLANS 




I 


II 


III 


2 hot dishes (as meat 


Soup 


Soup 


and vegetable) 


2 or 3 other hot 


2 or 3 hot dishes 


Bread and butter 


dishes (as meat 


A relish (as jelly or 


Dessert 


and 1 or 2 vege- 


pickle) 


Relish 


tables) 


Bread and butter 




Bread and butter 


Salad 




Dessert 


Dessert 




Beverage 


Beverage 



Relish 



One of the hot dishes can be fish or shellfish, or baked 
beans ; and when there are two vegetables we usually 
like to have potato, although rice, samp, or hominy can 
take the place of the potato. 

It is really an art to put together dishes that belong 
together ; so let us study this for a little time. 

Why do certain dishes fit each other at one meal ? 
Suppose we take Dinner II, and arrange it this way : 
potato soup, baked beans, boiled potato, boiled rice, 
bread and butter, rice pudding. Here is another menu : 
tomato soup, baked potatoes, stewed tomato, boiled 
greens, bread and butter, baked apples. Here is a 
third one : meat soup, meat, warmed-over fish, custard 
pudding made of eggs and milk. 

Do these menus seem just right to you ? Mollie 
Stark was sure that her father and brothers would not 
like any of them ; and, although they might prefer the 
third one to the others if they were very hungry, there 



200 FOOD AND HEALTH 

seemed something wrong even with that. Miss James 
asked her to change them and make something better. 
Here is the first menu that Mollie planned : tomato 
soup, meat, boiled potatoes, string beans, apple tapioca 
pudding. 

Here is another of Mollie's menus : potato soup, fish, 
stewed tomato, samp (in place of potato), and baked 
custard. Can you explain the difference between these 
and the first three ? You may be sure that there are 
too many dishes of the same nature in each of those 
three. The first has too much starchy food ; the 
second too much green vegetable and fruit food ; the 
third too much meat food. We seem to crave a mixture. 
This is where our natural habit and desire are good. 
In the two menus that Mollie planned, you can see that 
the balance is better among the meat, the starchy, and 
the " green " foods. You notice that the dessert in 
the second menu balances better with the first than it 
would with a hearty dish of meat, for fish does not 
seem to " stay by " as meat does. Our appetite and 
nature agree about some things in our meals. Other 
things that we like, we seem to like because of some 
custom that has come to us from the past. When the 
Puritans of New England cooked their wild turkey at 
the first Thanksgiving, they probably made cranberry 
sauce from the wild berries gathered in the bog ; the 
combination was pleasing, and we like it to this day. 
Some of our food habits are not so good ; as, for in- 
stance, a breakfast of sausage, griddlecakes, and sirup. 



THE HOME DINNER 201 

Here is one simple rule that is a good one in making 
menus : where there is a good supply of the meat dish, 
then a light dessert, principally fruit, is best ; but when 
the meat is a little short, have a dessert made with milk 
or with eggs and milk, or have suet pudding. 

The plans given are suggestions only. Of course we 
do not want soup at every dinner", and if the soup has 
meat in it, we do not need any other meat. We should 
all learn moderation in eating our dinner, especially 
if we are very hungry at the beginning of the meal ; 
and remember that, if there is a dessert, it is a part of the 
dinner. When we have eaten quite enough of every- 
thing else, and then take pudding or pie, no wonder that 
we find the latter giving trouble. 

How much shall we have for our family ? One rainy 
Saturday, when Mollie Stark was spending the day with 
Marjorie Allen, Marjorie said to her mother, " Please 
leave us all alone in the kitchen and dining room, and 
let us get dinner all by ourselves." Mrs. Allen took 
up a piece of sewing, glad to enjoy a quiet morning in 
the cheerful living room, with Grandmother. In about 
five minutes, open came the door from the kitchen, and 
Marjorie was saying, " Mother, how much tomato soup 
do you think we need ? " Her mother laughed. Then 
they all had a little talk about the quantities necessary 
to serve of each dish. Mrs. Allen explained that in 
a family as large as hers it is not needful to plan so 
carefully for the exact amount, for left-overs can al- 
ways be used ; and that it saves labor and fuel to have 



202 FOOD AND HEALTH 

portions of certain dishes remaining, especially those 
that keep well. Marjorie remembered that, when she 
had visited her aunt, who lives in a small apartment 
in the city, it was a part of the planning of a meal to 
have very little left over, because the storage space 
was so small ; whereas, in the Aliens' home, and 
the Starks', there is the cool pantry and the large ice 
box. 

This is the way Mrs. Allen helped the two girls to 
plan the quantities. There were nine people to serve : 
Grandmother, Mr. and Mrs. Allen, Mollie Stark, Bar- 
bara, her little sister and two younger brothers, and one 
man who was helping Mr. Allen. Mrs. Allen said that 
one learned by experience how much certain members 
of the family would eat of certain things, and that there 
was no fixed rule. 

MENU QUANTITY 

Tomato soup About J pint each, 2 qts. 

Remarks, z quarts enough. Grandmother does not take it. 
Pot roast 6 lb. 

Remarks. What remained, to be used second time. 
Mashed potato 15 large potatoes 

Remarks. If smaller potatoes, take two apiece. 
Sweet corn 2 doz. large ears of corn 

Remarks. This might not be enough the first time that corn 
is served in summer. 

Bread and butter 12 or 15 slices bread. A large 

square of butter on each 
butter plate. 

Remarks. More bread can be cut if wanted. The potato does 



THE HOME DINNER 203 

not need more butter; if butter is eaten on the corn, everybody 
calls for more. 

Apple pudding with baking 2-quart baking dish large enough 
powder crust. to hold eight or ten apples 

Foamy sauce. when sliced. 

Crust from a pint of flour. 
Double recipe for foamy sauce. 
Coffee 1 pint. ' 

Remarks. Mrs. Allen said that Mr. Allen and his helper could 
have a cup apiece, but it wasn't served for any one else ; and Grand- 
mother remarked that her digestion was good because she didn't 
take tea or coffee for dinner. 

Pickles None 

Remarks. Mrs. Allen said that the tomato was acid, and the 
apples slightly so ; so no more acid should be taken. 

Plan for cooking dinner. Then Mollie and Marjorie 
went back to the kitchen, and planned for cooking the 
dinner. 

When it is time for dinner, everything needs to be 
ready at about the same time, so that everything can 
be served and everybody helped quickly. Do you think 
that this is an easy matter ? One very wise man, who 
was getting his own breakfasts, said that he knew how 
to cook cereal, boil eggs, and make coffee, but that he 
never yet had been able to have them all ready at the 
same time ! Mollie and Marjorie thought this dinner 
all out before they began. This is the way they planned 
it: 

(1) See what things are already cooked, and what 
needs to be done to make them ready for the table. 



204 FOOD AND HEALTH 

(2) Notice what dishes take longest to cook, and start 
those first. 

(3) Notice what food is best eaten just as soon as it 
is done, and what can stand awhile on the back of the 
stove. 

(4) Notice what things you want to have cold, and 
see if you can put those on last. 

A cook who can do all this, have everything on. the 
table that needs to be there, all the hot dishes hot, and 
all the cold dishes cold, is really a very " smart " person. 
Here is an exercise for you : Write out the way that 
you think Mollie and Marjorie planned this dinner. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Consider the dinner that Mollie and Marjorie planned. 
Which food needs the longest cooking ? Which the shortest ? 
Which can be kept hot the most easily ? Study the recipes. Each 
pupil should make a plan, and then compare notes in class. 

2. Make several simple menus for dinner, and plan the cooking. 

3. What are some of the most important things to remember 
in planning a dinner ? 

Lesson 23 

meat as food 

What shall we do about meat ? 

The price of meat has risen so much in the last few 
years that this is an important question for everybody, 
both in the city and country. 



THE HOME DINNER 



205 




Fig. 



90. 



U. S. Department of Agriculture, 
Farmers' Bulletin, No. 183. 

Mr. Allen bought these tools 
for cutting meat. 



Mr. Allen decided to study very carefully the raising 
of meat. He sent to the Bureau of Animal Industry, 
U. S. Department of Agri- 
culture, for Bulletin No. 
183, which gives very care- 
ful directions about butch- 
ering the different animals, 
curing and storing meat 
for winter, and making 
products like sausages and 
headcheese. When the 
other Pleasant Valley 
farmers talked about the 
matter at the Grange, they 

decided to follow Mr. Allen's example, and sent for 
this very valuable pamphlet. 

Do we need meat as a food ? When we can use milk, 
cheese, eggs, vegetables, fruit, and bread plentifully, 
there is much less need of meat than many people 
think. If it is our habit to eat it freely, we should not 
make a sudden change and leave it off immediately ; 
but most people are much better in health when they 
eat meat but once a day. Meat gives us protein, fat, 
and mineral matter. Gelatin, which comes from the 
bones and tissue, is a protein, which is of use in the body. 
The juices of the meat which give it flavor have no food 
value. Some people seem to be able to digest meat 
more easily than the other protein foods, — fish, eggs, 
milk, and so on, — but this is not always the case. 



206 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



When a great deal of meat is eaten, say three times a 
day, intestinal trouble may result, and too much acid 
is formed in the body. People who think that they 



LEAF FAT (TENDERLOIN rKTDNEY 





B E L^^d(/S^> ' . 





Courtesy ofE. C. B'ridgman, New York. 

Fig. 91. — Cuts of pork. 

must eat meat should drink water in large quantities 
and eat fruit and green vegetables. 

Little children should not be given meat ; for milk, 
eggs, and grain foods are better for growth, and the 
meat may take away their liking for these foods. Most 
people do enjoy the taste of meat, but we can learn to 
be moderate in its use. There are many human beings 
who never touch it, and who are well nourished, with 
bodies strong for work. 

The cost of meat. Only when our meat comes from 
wild animals, who find their own food, is meat an in- 



THE HOME DINNER 



207 



expensive food. Even when we kill and use our own 
animals, we pay for the meat in the food we give to them. 
The interest on the pasture land which cannot be used for 
other purposes, and our own labor in caring for animals, 



JiDDLE 



K&CK 




'*, 



cutlets \£ R JB«W. ::>:^ ^' 





Fig. 92. 



Courtesy of E.C. Bridgman, New York. 
Cuts of veal. 



housing them, and raising food for them, taken all to- 
gether make it expensive to eat them. On the other 
hand, the milk, cream, butter, and cheese that they 
give us is a less costly food than their own flesh. This 
is true of beef at least. You can see that it is different 
with the hog, whose flesh is the only product. From 
the sheep we have wool as well as meat, but no other 
product that we can use as food. All these animals 



208 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



make a return to the land, which is valuable. Taken 
as food to be raised, do you not see that the beef is 
the most costly to the farmer ? Veal, the flesh of the 
calf, is less costly to the farmer than beef. Can you 
explain why ? The calf should not be eaten when less 



SSJS^rtbr 






TENDERLOIN 



FOffi gWffTKR^ 



-^ ss r%' 



L4^.Tug£QIN j^$t 



| i PRIME FIB 5) CHUCK 

TOP ' .j 

ROUND, sirloin 

PLATE c 4r^J 

NAVEL g 






Courtesy of E. C. Bridgman, New York. 

Fig. 93 . — Cuts of beef. 



than six weeks old. All this does not mean that we 
should not eat meat ; but we should understand that it is 
not a cheap food simply because we raise it ourselves, for 
we pay for it in food and labor, and often can get better 
food value for ourselves from other things for less labor. 
Look on page 170 again to see the values of eggs, milk, 
and beef ; and you can see a little more clearly still why 
milk and eggs are on the whole cheaper than any meat. 



THE HOME DINNER 



209 



What to be careful about in buying meat. Mrs. 
Allen was careful in explaining to Mollie and Marjorie 
that she bought from one butcher's cart rather than 
another, because this butcher was careful to buy good 



KIDNEY 



.WND_,Q UARTER/ " YORg_QU&S$ 




MLoinChsps Vj //( / , , * '///>% in 

LOIN - pjBCH6l%/;teDE% 
LOIMGAST GR0MFOAST > C J$W^ 

(TnclRib) " ■ I4Rt? I Jl U^ U\ 

, FLANK ' j ' || !/ i 1 \\^ 
B R E A o< s T 




TROTTER 




Courtesy of E. C. Bridgman, New York. 
Fig. 94. — Cuts of lamb and mutton. 



beef, in the first place. Then, too, he had a clean place 
for hanging his beef, chilled by ice. His shop was 
very clean, scrubbed out often, and he fought flies all 
the time. His cart, too, was cleaned daily, screened 
from flies, and the meat covered from the dust of the 
road. The other butcher allowed flies to crawl over 
the meat, and his cart and shop had an unclean ap- 
pearance and smell. 



2IO 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



Miss James had talked about certain dangers from 
meat. If the animals themselves are unhealthy, there 
may be tiny living creatures in their flesh, known as 

parasites. The ter- 
rible disease tri- 
china sometimes 
found in pork is one 
of these. Tape- 
worms come from 
beef. We can pro- 
tect ourselves from 
these parasites by 
thorough cooking 
of the meat. The 
cooked meat should 
be pink rather than 
red and raw looking. 
Another trouble, 
known as ptomaine 
poisoning, may oc- 
cur when meat has 
been kept too long and has not been kept cold enough. 
The ptomaine is a poison formed by the bacteria that 
have developed in the meat. Then, again, the bacteria 
themselves injure us, and are now thought to be the 
cause of most of the sickness which has been called 
ptomaine poisoning. 

There are laws that require inspection of all meat. 
The Woman's Club in Pleasant Valley made a very 




U. S. Deparimt/d of Agriculture, Farmers' Bulletin 188. 

Fig. 95. — Prime ribs of beef. a. Rolled roast, 
b. Folded roast, c. Standing roast. 



THE HOME DINNER 



211 



thorough study of this subject and worked with the 
local butchers until matters were very much improved. 

Selecting meat for cooking. The cuts of meat vary 
somewhat in different parts of the country. We know 
that meat is either 
tough or tender, 
and that the differ- 
ence is caused by 
the amount of ex- 
ercise given to the 
different muscles 
of the animal's 
body. The flesh 
of the meat is mus- 
cle. You easily 
see that the mus- 
cles lying along the 
animal's spine and 
underneath the 
body are used 
much less than the muscles of the neck and the legs. 
The tough cuts, therefore, come from the neck and 
legs, the tender cuts from the middle of the back, 
and the toughness increases toward the neck and the 
hind legs. The muscles of the abdomen give a tender 
and coarse-grained meat. 

The tender meat is no more nourishing than the tough, 
but is easier and pleasanter to chew ; and, as there is 
less tender meat than tough, the tender meat costs more 




U. S. Department of Agriculture, Farmers' Bulletin 183. 

Fig. 96. — Side cuts of pork. a. Loin. b. Fat 
back. c. Spare ribs. d. Bacon strip, e. Trim- 
mings. 



f. Leaf. 



212 FOOD AND HEALTH 

than the tough. It is not good sense to buy porter- 
house steak at 30 or 32 cents a pound, or to take it in 
exchange for eggs at that price. It is better to buy the 
round or rump steak and cook it in such a way that it 
loses its toughness. Can you explain why the meat of 
young animals is more tender than that of the full- 
grown creature ? 

How shall we cook our meat? Sometimes we wish 
to keep the juices in the meat, and sometimes we wish 
to draw out the juices for beef tea or soup, or for making 
gravy. If we buy a tender meat, we do not wish to 
make it hard by poor cooking. If the meat is tough, 
we should select some cooking process that will make 
the meat as tender as possible. 

Let us try two simple experiments that will show us 
what to do when we wish to draw the juices out, or to 
keep the juices in. 

TWO EXPERIMENTS WITH MEAT 

Experiment A. 

Chop finely a small piece of meat, squeeze out the juice 
with a lemon squeezer, and heat this juice in a saucepan. 
Notice a whitish substance that results. This is meat albu- 
min that is affected by heat in about the same way that the 
white of egg is affected. We say that the albumin has coagu- 
lated. 

Experiment B. 

Apparatus. If possible, 2 glass beakers, 1 square wire net. 
If these are not available, use an ordinary tumbler and a small 
saucepan. 



THE HOME DINNER 



213 



Method, a. Put a small piece of meat in a beaker with 
cold water, and allow it to stand. 

b. Bring water to the boiling point in the beaker. Throw 
in a small piece of meat. 

Compare the appearance of the two pieces of meat and the 
water in the two beakers. What has happened ? You see 
that the juices of the meat have come out in the cold water. 
In the other piece you can see that the surface of the piece 
is cooked and that little of the juice is in the water. The heat 
of the water has coagulated the meat albumin just as it did in 
Experiment A. This has made a little crust over the meat and 
the juices cannot escape. A hot pan has just the same effect. 

In order to understand what cooking does to meat 
we must know something more of the structure of the 
muscle. Each muscle is made up of bundles of tiny 
tubes held together by a strong substance that we call 
connective tissue. In tough meat the muscle tubes 
are thicker and there is more of the connective tissue. 
If you examine a piece of meat, you can easily find this 
tissue. The structure of the muscle is a little like that 
of an orange. Take a section from an orange, open it, 
and take out some of the single cells. These cells may 
stand for the muscle cells of meat that you can see only 
through a microscope. If you cut one of the tiny or- 
ange cells, the juice escapes, and this is what happens 
when the muscle cells are cut across. The juices will 
also pass through the wall of the cell when the muscle 
is heated and when the meat is put into cold water. 
When, however, we sear the outside of the meat, a 
crust is formed which keeps the other juices in. 



2i 4 FOOD AND HEALTH 

Whether the meat is tough or tender, the most valu- 
able protein stays behind in the muscle cell. The 
substances that we can draw out from the cells are called 
the extractives, because they can be extracted. The 
tough meat has as much nutritive value as, if not more 
than, the tender ; and our problem is to soften the 
strong connective tissue. This can be done by long, 
slow cooking with plenty of moisture, which dissolves 
out the gelatin and softens the whole mass. A high 
temperature shrinks and hardens fiber, and the tender- 
est meat will become like sole leather, if cooked too hard 
and too long. This is true with tough or tender fowl. 

Something more about cooking meat. In cooking 
pieces of tender meat, therefore, we sear the outside 
by using a high temperature at first, and then all that is 
necessary is to cook the meat at a lower temperature 
until it is done through. Thin pieces, like steak and 
chops, cook only a short time, while roasts and boiling 
pieces cook much longer. 

Salted, corned, and smoked meats. Mrs. Allen 
always corns the beef for her family. She always 
selects solid pieces of beef, but some people like the 
plate beef with layers of fat in it. 

Corning beef. 1 

What, ioo lb. of solid meat with the bone out 
i J lb. saltpeter 
25 lb. of salt 
6-8 oz. of onion, chopped fine 

1 This recipe is due to the courtesy of a southern butcher. In the 
original rule garlic was used instead of onion. 



THE HOME DINNER 215 

How to make. Rub each piece well with saltpeter, salt, and 
onion. Put the meat in layers in the barrel, and cover the top 
with salt. When this has stood 3 or 4 days, put a board on 
the top and put heavy weights on the board. This will be 
ready for use in 8 days. Mrs. Allen always takes it from the 
bottom first. 

How to cook the corned beef. 

Soak a piece of the right size in cold water overnight. In the 
morning wipe it off and put it in a kettle of cold water. Heat 
the water slowly and take off the scum. Let the water boil 
very gently for 4 or 5 hours, depending on the size. When 
served hot, let it stand a few minutes where it will not boil, 
before draining off the water. 

To serve cold. Pull the meat apart with two forks, taking 
out poor pieces, and mixing up the lean and fat. Put it into 
a pan. A bread pan makes a good shape. Put another pan 
on top, and set flatirons on the pan. This presses the meat 
down, if you let it stand for several hours. When cold, it can 
be nicely sliced and is good for sandwiches or for a supper dish. 

Boiled ham. 

Ham is one of the smoked meats. A leg of ham makes an 
excellent dinner, and the left-over pieces can be used to the 
very last scrap. 

Soak the ham overnight, trim, wash off, and put to soak 
again. Mrs. Allen always soaks hers two nights and a day. 
In the morning put it in a kettle of cold water, heat it slowly, 
and let it boil about 5 hours. A knitting needle is a good 
thing to test it with. When it is done, skim it, put it back in 
the kettle, and let it stand until cold. If you want to serve it 
hot, take it from the kettle, put it in a roasting pan, and let 
it bake until the fat begins to cook. Sprinkle it all over with 
fine cracker crumbs or flour, and bake it until the crust is 
brown. 



2i6 FOOD AND HEALTH 

Cooking fresh meat. The flavors to be used with 
meat are a very important part of meat cookery, es- 
pecially with tough meats. Dried herbs help to make 
meat dishes savory. Onions, carrots, turnips, celery, 
cabbage, in small portions, give a fine flavor. Spices, 
such as cloves, mustard, or even nutmeg, used in small 
quantities, also add to the savoriness of cooked meat ; 
a little acid like lemon juice, or currant jelly, put into 
a soup, or stirred into a gravy, helps very much. 

Broiling tender chops and steak. 

Never spoil your tender meat by frying it hard with a large 
amount of fat. 

Broiling over coals. Wipe meat with a damp cloth. If 
a wood or coal stove is used, have a bed of glowing coals 
ready. If gas is used, have the gas broiler thoroughly heated. 
Grease the bars of the broiler. Place meat in the broiler and 
sear meat first on one side, then on the other. Continue to 
turn the broiler, and cook the meat until it is brown and 
done according to taste. Steak an inch thick will take about 
ten minutes to be cooked to a medium degree. Chops are 
broiled in the same way. 

Pan broiled. Here we use just enough fat to keep the 
meat from sticking. An iron frying pan is the best utensil. 
Heat the pan and brush it over with a small piece of fat cut 
from the steak or the chops. The purpose of this is merely 
to keep the meat from sticking to the pan. The principle 
of cooking is the same as with broiling over coals. Turn the 
steak or chops frequently, using a knife and a fork, but being 
careful not to prick the meat with the fork. The length of 
time is slightly longer than for broiling. This method must 
not be confused with the frying of steak in a pan with a large 



THE HOME DINNER 217 

amount of fat. This does not fry the steak, and is often a 
convenient method. 

Roasted meat. This is a rule for tender meats. Wipe roast 
with a damp cloth. Sprinkle with salt and dredge with flour. 
Place in a roasting pan, fat side up if it is a standing roast. 
Put the roast in a very hot oven, and after fifteen minutes re- 
duce the heat. Baste roast two or three times with the fat 
that tries out during cooking. The usual allowance of time 
for a medium rare roast is fifteen minutes for every pound of 
meat. 

Roast beef gravy. After the roast has been taken from the 
pan, pour out all but ij tablespoonfuls of the melted fat. Stir 
in 1 heaping tablespoonful of flour and brown very slightly. 
Add one cup of cold water and stir constantly until thickened. 
Add \ teaspoonful salt. Strain. 

Round steak. Ask the butcher to cut it an inch or an inch 
and a half thick. A pound of round steak cooked in this 
way will give good-sized portions to three people. Wash the 
steak off" with salt and water. Heat* a deep frying pan, and 
melt enough beef suet to just cover the bottom. Make the 
pan very hot and brown the steak first on one side, then on the 
other. Remove to a cooler part of the stove, or turn down the 
flame, if it is a blue-flame oil stove. To a pound of steak allow 
1 teaspoonful of salt, \ an onion chopped. Cover the meat 
with water, put a cover on the pan, and let the steak simmer 
for two hours. This is perfect when cooked in the Atkinson 
cooker all the morning. You may make this more savory by 
adding a little of several kinds of vegetables. 

A pot roast or stew. For this select a large, solid piece of 
meat from rump or round. The method of cooking is in prin- 
ciple just like the cooking of the round steak, only the piece 
of meat is larger. The meat is browned all over in fat and 
put in the kettle. Suppose you have a 5-lb. piece of meat. 
Put in the kettle with it two or three carrots, a small turnip 



218 FOOD AND HEALTH 

or two, two or three onions, and a few stalks of celery or celery 
leaves or celery salt. The flavor is improved by a few cloves, 
say \ dozen. Add water and cook very gently for from 4 to 
6 hours. This is another kind of dish that cooks well in the 
Atkinson cooker. When you are ready to serve the beef, 
take it out and put it on a platter and keep hot. If the water 
has not boiled away enough, let it cook a little longer, and 
thicken with a little flour. If you have a pint of gravy, you will 
need a tablespoonful of flour. Stir a little cold water into the 
flour, and stir this paste gradually into the hot liquid. Let 
it boil up and serve it with the meat. 

Old-fashioned meat soup. Everybody says that 
Grandmother Stark can make the best soup in Pleasant 
Valley : and she has not any rule ! You will find 
recipes for making soup in all the cook books, but this 
is Grandmother Stark's method. She uses meat 
bones or chicken bones and any pieces of cold meat that 
are left. She cuts up the larger pieces of meat and 
puts them to one side. She breaks up the bones, puts 
them in a kettle, and covers them with cold water. 
The kettle stands on the stove all day long, simmering 
gently, and from time to time Mrs. Stark adds a little 
more hot water. When the soup has simmered until 
the bones are bare, they are removed. Then Mrs. 
Stark looks in the pantry and refrigerator, and adds any 
cooked vegetable that is left, and a little stewed fruit, 
if it is not too sweet. When she is asked what she uses, 
she says, " Just whatever I find." Sometimes she adds 
a teaspoonful or so of dried herbs or a few cloves. If 
the soup is a little thin, it is thickened with flour, but 



THE HOME DINNER 219 

when cold mashed potato or beans are added, no other 
thickening is needed. Just before serving, the larger 
pieces of meat are added and, if there are not enough 
of these, cooked vegetables like carrots, turnips, beets, 
or whole peas and beans. Served with bread this 
makes a good dinner or supper for any cold day in 
winter. It is not a summer dish because it needs a 
long, slow cooking. It can be made in an Atkinson 
cooker, but not so well in a fireless cooker. You may 
think that you would not like it ; but try it some time 
and see. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Why is meat a more expensive food than beans ? 

2. Why is it better to eat meat only once or twice a day ? 

3. Make a list of the cost of different cuts of meat in your 
own home place. Study cost of canned meats (page 298). 

4. What is a meat substitute ? Make a list of those that you 
can use at home. Write recipes for tough and tender fowl. 

Lesson 24 

fresh vegetables 

How may we have fresh vegetables and use them to best ad- 
vantage ? 

It is always a happy moment with Marjorie Allen 
and her brothers and sisters when the first crisp heads 
of lettuce, tender green peas, and succulent sweet corn 
are ready for the table. 

The home garden. Mrs. Allen, Marjorie, and the 
children plant their own garden, and with a hand 



220 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



machine keep it well cultivated. It is fenced in by 
wire netting and laid out in convenient beds with 

narrow paths between, and 
with bright annual flowers 
making a gay border. Mr. 
Allen has the garden plot 
plowed and harrowed in the 
spring, and runs the culti- 
vator through a few times 
in the course of the season. 
For fertilizer they use sweep- 
ings from the henhouse 
and wood ashes, except with 
the potatoes. Besides, Mr. 
Allen gives them a share of 
his acid phosphate. They 
also work into the soil de- 
cayed leaves and vegetables, 
which give the material that 
most soil needs so much. 

Watering the garden. 

This is the problem in dry 

Remem- 

Fig.97- — Mrs. Allen's garden has a ^ er tQ fc.™ a blanket of 
border or rudbeckia. x 

dry earth around the plants 
by cultivation. If you have running water and a hose, 
you are indeed fortunate. But sometimes it pays to 
carry water. Use a pail on a wheelbarrow, and, if the 
water supply is low, take slops from the house, diluted 




Courtesy of New York State College of 
Agriculture at Cornell University. SeaSOnS and SOUS. 



THE HOME DINNER 



221 



with clean water if the slops are strong with soap and 

washing powder. One bright 

girl, a member of a canning 

club, put an empty tin can 

with holes in the lower part 

in the ground near the roots 

of each tomato plant, and 

kept each can full of water. 

She was amply paid for her 

trouble by the large crop of 

the fruit in a dry season. 
Planting in succession. 
One can have 
each kind of 
vegetable last- 
ing over a pe- 
riod of sev- 
eral weeks, 
by planting 
early and late 
varieties of 

the kind, and by planting several times. 
This more than pays for all the trou- 
ble. 

Plant insects and diseases. Watch for 
them above ground and below. Send for 
advice to your State College. Letting 
things go is ruinous in the end. Some- 
body has suggested farming as a moral substitute for 





Courtesy of New York State College of 
Agriculture at Cornell University. 

Fig. 98. — The tools Mrs. Allen and 
Marjorie found necessary for mak- 
ing and cultivating their home 
garden. 



Courtesy of New Yorb 
State College of Agri- 
culture at Cornell 
University. 

Fig. 99. — Mar- 
jor i e Allen 
learned to wrap 
paper around a 
seedling to keep 
off cutworms. 



222 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



war. Do you understand what this means ? Ask 
your father's opinion of this. 

What shall we have ? Study your seed catalogue and 
try new kinds. Lettuce, spinach, radishes, asparagus, 




Courtesy of Mrs. Hetty Browne, Winthrop Normal and Industrial College. 

Fig. ioo. — The boys and girls with the teacher are making a school garden at 
the Oak Ridge School in another wide-awake town. 



peas, beans (string and shell), summer squash, summer 
turnips, early beets, early carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, 
sweet corn, lima beans, cauliflower, cabbage, — these 
are the staples, but there are still others. The winter 
vegetables need to be grown in larger quantity than you 
can manage alone. 

Picking vegetables. Gather green vegetables as 
near the time of cooking as possible. In hot weather 



THE HOME DINNER 



223 




224 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



it is pleasant in the cool of the day after supper to 
gather them for use next day, however. Peas and 

beans can be picked in the 
evening, shelled and pre- 
pared. Potatoes and root 
vegetables do not lose fresh- 
ness at once. Lettuce, spin- 
ach, and cucumbers should 
be put in cold water imme- 
diately. If cucumbers are 
pared and sliced, or cut 
lengthwise and put in salted 
water, they seem to become 
more digestible for some 
people. 

Storing winter vegetables. 
Hard squash, pumpkins, po- 
tatoes, carrots, beets, tur- 
nips, cabbages (also apples) — 
what shall we do with these ? 
You see, storing is a way of 
preserving for a time the veg- 
etables that do not easily spoil. You need a dry storage 
place, above the freezing point, yet not too warm. It 
is much better to have a storehouse dug into the ground 
for this purpose than to keep many vegetables under 
the house. If this cannot be, partition off a part of 
the cellar for vegetables. In some way arrange to have 
air enter it when the weather is not too cold ; and in 




uourtesy of New York Stale College < 
Agriculture at Cornell University. 

Fig. 102. — Fruit and vegetables 
keep firm and fresh for a longer 
time if stored in a cellar venti- 
lated in some simple way like this. 



THE HOME DINNER 



225 



Carbohydrates: 3.4 

Ash:'l.O 




Water:94.5 



ProteinOJ 



PARSNIP 



Fig. 103. — (a) Composition of celery. (b) Composition of a parsnip. 



Water:75.4 



GREEN CORN. 

EDIBLE PORTION 

Protein:3.1 




Carbohydrates: 19.7 



Ash: 0.7 



Fuel 
value 

(c) Composition of green corn. 
Edible portion. 



Fat:.1.1 



1 United States Department of Agriculture. Office of Experiment 
Station, A. C. True, Director. Prepared by C. F. Langworthy, Expert in 
charge of Nutrition Investigations, 



226 FOOD AND HEALTH 

early spring give it a " big " cleaning out, finishing off 
with whitewash. 

What foodstuffs do vegetables give us ? We may, 
indeed, look with pride upon the results of our working 
with nature, for each vegetable is a little storehouse 
of materials, taken from the earth, air, and water, that 
are sources of health and strength for us. Remember in 
particular the iron, the lime, the sulphur, and all the 
other minerals that Mother Nature has laid away so 
cunningly and that we so greatly need. Taking into 
account all the varieties, we eat every part of a plant, 
if not always the whole of any one — cauliflower is a de- 
formed flower, you know. 

The seeds Contain all the foodstuffs. 

Well-developed peas and beans are rich 
in protein. 
Roots and tubers Contain all the foodstuffs. 

(the potato) and Small amount of protein and fat. 
the bulb (onion) Much starch or some form of sugar. 

Rinds (squash and Contain all the foodstuffs in small amounts. 

pumpkin) Mineral substances the chief value. 

Leaves and stems Very valuable on account of the mineral 

matter. Other substances in such small 
i quantities that they are not important. 

Make your own list in your notebook, putting 
against seeds all the seed vegetables that you know, and 
so on. Where will you put string beans ? This list is 
useful in connection with that just given, because it 
will show you the chief food value of each kind. 



THE HOME DINNER 227 

If you have a good supply of many varieties, you will 
use less meat in summer. Eating vegetables is much 
better for you, and for your purse. 

Eating vegetables raw. We can eat lettuce and some 
other green leaves raw. We enjoy crisp radishes, cu- 
cumber, and celery, and tomatoes and melons, which 
are " fruit " rather than "vegetables." Our work 
with these is to serve them clean and cool and to remove 
only the tougher outside skin. 

How shall we best cook our vegetables ? This story 
will amuse you. One day a mistress asked her cook 
to bring the meat soup from the refrigerator that she 
herself might prepare it for the dinner. The cook 
brought a bowl with a bone, bare except for gristle and 
a few dry strings of meat. " But where is the soup ? " 
" Oh, ma'am, this is all the soup there was when I threw 
away the water ! " But what has happened if you cook 
spinach in a kettle of boiling salted water and strain off 
all the water ? You have left behind little more than 
the bones of the spinach, for in that water was lost the 
precious iron that you so much need. After such 
struggles to store up food material it seems a bit foolish 
to throw it away, does it not ? " Shall we never boil 
vegetables, then ? " Yes, sometimes, but not often. 
We will look into this a little further. 

What does cooking do to vegetables ? You know 
already what happens to the vegetable fiber and 
starch. Where there is protein the change in cooking 
is not very important. The heat does not change the 



228 FOOD AND HEALTH 

mineral matter, but the water dissolves out the mineral 
substances to a large extent. 

What can you do then to save the mineral matter ? 
One way is to use as little water as possible, and then 
use the water ; that is, have only so much water that 
by the time the vegetables are tender there is so little 
liquid left in the bottom of the pot that it can be 
served with the vegetables. Perhaps this table will 
help you : 

Bake when you can Potatoes, squash, corn, even young 

beets, old beans, and peas. 
Steam when you can Any vegetable. In a steamer the 

cooking takes more time. 
Stew when you can Spinach, celery, string beans, tender 

(This means so little peas, and so on. 

water that none is 

thrown away.) 
Boil in large quantity Old, strong-flavored vegetables, be- 

of water and throw cause you want to be rid of the 

away the water flavor — strong onions and cabbage. 

Time-table for stewing, boiling, and baking. 

Fifteen minutes. Tender cabbage and sweet corn. These 
are usually cooked too long. 

Thirty minutes. Asparagus, peas, potatoes of medium size, 
summer squash, tomatoes. 

Forty-five minutes. Young beets and carrots, onions, young 
parsnips, medium potatoes baked, sweet potatoes boiled. 

One hour. String and shelled beans, cauliflower, oyster 
plant; winter squash, steamed or baked; young turnips. 

Two hours. Old carrots, beets, and turnips. 

Six to eight hours (or more). Dried beans, lentils, and 
peas, baked in the oven, with water added. 



THE HOME DINNER 



229 



Stewed celery. 

(A green vegetable.) Stalks of celery, too tough or coarse 
for serving uncooked, are delicious when stewed. The pro- 
cess is simple. Wash, scrape, and cut the stalks crosswise. 
Place them in a stewpan, barely cover with hot water, adding 
a teaspoonful of salt to a pint of celery. Cook gently for half 
an hour or until the celery is tender. Use the liquid remaining 
in making a sauce, adding some milk to make the necessary 
amount of liquid. Three fourths of a cup of sauce is enough 
for a pint of celery. (See page 64.) 

Cabbage. 

The method given makes cabbage a delicious and attractive 
vegetable, as delicate as cauliflower; and the odor in the 
kitchen is not noticeable. 

Select a small cabbage, with the ribs in the leaves not too 
thick. Prepare the cabbage before washing it by cutting out 
the stalks from below with a sharp knife. Separate the 
leaves. Have ready the largest kettle available, nearly 
full of rapidly boiling water. Drop in one cabbage leaf at a 
time, pressing each one down with a long-handled spoon or 
skimmer. Do this so slowly that the water does not stop 
boiling. Leave the kettle uncovered, and allow the cabbage 
to cook from 12 to 15 minutes, depending on the thickness of 
the leaf stalks. Remove the leaves with a long-handled 
skimmer, putting them into a colander standing on a plate. 
Immediately pour the hot water down the sink drain, turn on 
the cold water to flush away the odor, and fill the kettle with 
cold water. While the cabbage is cooking, you have made a 
pint of butter sauce, adding a teaspoonful of salt, and have 
prepared \ cup of buttered crumbs. Cut the cabbage leaves 
slightly, placing them in a baking dish ; pour the sauce over 
them, sprinkle the crumbs on the top, and brown the crumbs 
in the oven, 



230 



FOOD AND HEALTH 




Courtesy of New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. 



Fig. 104. — Baked beans. The beans are thoroughly cooked, but firm and 

whole. 



Baked beans. 



(A nitrogenous vegetable and a meat substitute.) This 
dish, known in old days in New England, was baked to per- 
fection in the old brick oven. Baked beans seem difficult of 
digestion for some people. The mustard is supposed to be 
helpful, and adds something to the flavor. If the molasses is 
omitted, or but a small amount used, and if butter takes the 
place of pork or suet, the beans seem more digestible. In 
different parts of New England the dish is varied. Some 
people prefer rather dry baked beans ; others wish them moist 
and very sweet. 



THE HOME DINNER 231 

What and how much. 

1 quart of white beans 

1 teaspoonful of soda 

J lb. salt pork or more, or 

4 tablespoonfuls of beef fat or butter substitute 

Molasses, from two tablespoonfuls to J cup, or none 

1 teaspoonful of mustard 

Utensils. A kettle. A covered bean pot. 

How to make. Wash and soak the beans in cold water over 
night. Pour off any water that remains. Put the beans 
into the kettle, cover with cold water, add the soda, and cook 
gently until the beans are slightly softened. The soda aids 
the softening. Pour off the water again, and put the beans 
into the pot. Mix the molasses and mustard with a pint of 
water, and pour this over the beans, adding more water if the 
beans are not covered. Place the pork or other fat upon the 
beans, and cover the pot. If fat other than pork is used, salt 
must be added to the beans. The beans should bake slowly 
for from 6 to 8 hours, and even longer in a very slow oven. 

Baked peas. 

Save old peas from the garden and dry. Bake as for beans. 
They soften sooner than beans. 

Vegetable soups. 

When milk is used with the vegetable, you have a most 
nutritious dish. When made with milk, they are a good dish 
for a winter dinner or supper. We do not seem to need or 
want them so much in hot weather. Use them, too, for the 
school luncheon. 

Your father and brother may think that they do not like 
soup at any time. Give them this soup some cold winter 
night, with small pieces of toast in it. The luncheon club 
had it at school one cold noon. Barbara Groves made it for 
the home supper. 



2 3 2 FOOD AND HEALTH 

Potato soup. 

What and how much. 

Potato I cup, mashed 

Milk i quart 

Flour i tablespoonful 

Butter i tablespoonful 

Salt 2 teaspoonfuls 

Celery stalks, cut small I teaspoonful 

Onion, chopped I tablespoonful 

Pepper, cayenne To taste 

Remarks. If a thicker soup is desired, use more of the 
mashed potato. If celery salt is used, omit one teaspoonful 
of the salt. Less onion may be used, and the pepper omitted. 

Utensils. Make the list yourself, after reading the direc- 
tions for mixing. 

How to mix. Boil and mash the potato, or use cold mashed 
potato. Heat the milk in the double boiler with the celery 
and onion. Add the milk gradually to the mashed potato, 
beating vigorously. 

Put this mixture through a strainer into the double boiler, 
and reheat it. Melt the butter in a small saucepan, and stir in 
the flour; add slowly half a cup of the soup to the butter and 
flour paste ; and then pour this slowly into the mixture in the 
double boiler, stirring all the time. The soup will be ready 
to serve in about ten minutes. 

The important point in this recipe is the quality of the 
mashed potato. It should be "dry and light. It may be made 
from hot, mealy baked potatoes. If cold mashed potato is 
used, this should be made light again with a fork. This 
amount will serve four to six people. 

Dried vegetable soups. 

Mollie Stark made a dried pea soup in their Aladdin oven, 
cooking the peas for some six to eight hours, and adding some 



THE HOME DINNER 233 

milk and seasoning at the end. Beans make excellent soup 
boiled with a little pork. It is impossible to give a rule for the 
amount of water or length of time. Water has to be added 
from time to time, and the beans can simmer on the back of 
the stove all day. The water can be allowed to boil away until 
the mass is rather thick, and the milk added just before serving. 



Cream of tomato soup. 




What and how much. 




Tomato juice 


i cup 


Milk 


1 quart 


Flour 


2 tablespoonfuls 


Butter 


2 tablespoonfuls 


Salt 


2 teaspoonfuls 


Bicarbonate of soda 


J teaspoonful 



Pepper, cayenne To taste 

Remarks. Celery and onion may be added, but are not 
necessary. When you become expert, you will be able to use 
a larger amount of tomato juice, and even to omit the soda. 

How to mix. This you will be able to work out for your- 
self. First perform this simple experiment. Stir together a 
tablespoonful of stewed tomato and a tablespoonful of milk. 
What happens ? Heat this mixture. What further do you 
notice ? How may you best extract the juice from the tomato ? 
You have noticed the effect of the acid tomato upon the milk. 
The soda is added to prevent this effect. Will you stir the 
soda into the tomato juice or into the milk ? Will you stir 
the tomato juice into the milk, or the milk into the tomato 
juice ? Will you cook the mixture at all ? How long before 
serving will you mix the two ? When will you add the butter 
and flour ? 

The important point in this soup is to prevent the curdling ; 
so you safeguard the milk at each step. 

Squares of toast may be served with any of these soups. 



234 FOOD AND HEALTH 



EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Send for a seed catalogue to some firm near home. 

2. Try at least two or three new vegetables that you never have 
had for the home table. 

3. Make a drawing of a garden that you might have at home. 

4. What are some of the points that you must have in mind 
in selecting a garden plot ? 

5. Notice the insects and plant diseases that are most common 
in your own place. Ask your teacher to discuss these at school 
and to help you to find the pamphlets that will tell about rem- 
edies. 

6. What do you throw away if you cook spinach in a large 
kettle of water and drain off" all the water ? 

7. Take the rule for potato soup, and plan for other vegetables 
to use in place of it. 

8. Do the same thing with the tomato soup. (Notice that in 
one you use a pulp and in the other a vegetable juice.) 

9. Why is it important to have vegetables every day ? 

10. Which one of the recipes in this lesson gives you a meat 
substitute ? 

Lesson 25 

dishes for dessert 

There are many desserts as nice, easier to make, and better for 
us to eat than pie. What are some that we can make ? 

Miss James explained to her class that puddings and 
pies contain good food material, and said once more 
that they are a part of a dinner or supper, not to be 
eaten when we are fully satisfied. The pudding or pie 
for dessert does not need to be expensive. 



THE HOME DINNER 235 

One of the schoolgirls asked if they might not have 
an exhibit of different desserts. This lesson has a few 
pictures of those that were displayed. By each plate 
there was a neatly printed card giving the recipe, the 
length of time taken to make it, and the cost. The 
amount of time that we put into cooking is something 
that we should be careful to watch. While we may 
enjoy eating a sweet dish at the end of the meal, how 
foolish it is to spend an hour or more in fancy cooking 
when there are other things to do that are so much more 
interesting and worth while. The dish may be attrac- 
tive in appearance and yet quite easy to make. If you 
have an old-fashioned cook book at home, you will be 
interested to see how much time was sometimes given 
to the making of an elaborate dish to be eaten in a 
very few minutes. 

How many kinds of dessert are there ? Pies and 
tarts and puddings, both hot and cold ; fruit in every 
shape ; jellies, custards, ices and ice cream ; nuts and 
raisins ; crackers and cheese alone or with fruit. One 
very simple dessert for a hot day is sour-milk cheese, or 
cream cheese with crackers and a little jam or jelly. 

Our desserts may be made of eggs, milk, cream, gela- 
tin ; stale cake and bread ; baking-powder biscuit 
crusts, shortcakes, and pastry. We also use starchy sub- 
stances, — cornstarch, arrowroot, tapioca, and manioca ; 
and fruit of every possible kind. The animal products 
important in desserts, in addition to milk and eggs, are 
beef suet, butter, and lard. 



236 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



You will find it very amusing to study several cook 
books, and see how many desserts can be made from 




Courtesy o/Dept. of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College. 
Fig. 105. — A gelatin mold is an attractive dessert. 

these materials. We have not room for many in this 
little book, but there are a few to try at home and, per- 
haps, at school. 

Fruit desserts. In the lessons on fruit you have 
learned something about its use for dessert : fruit 
stewed, fruit scalloped, and fruit with a baking-powder 
crust. Here is another kind of fruit dessert for a hot day : 



Fruit sponge, with cornstarch. 




What and how much. 




Fruit juice 
Water 


1 cup 
1 cup 



or 



THE HOME DINNER 237 



Lemon juice 


1 or 2 lemons 


Water 


2 cups 


Sugar 


2 or 3 tablespoonfuls 


Cornstarch 


3 tablespoonfuls 


Eggs 


2 or 3 



How to make. Cook the cornstarch and the water in a stew- 
pan until the mixture is clear. Add the sugar and the fruit 
juice, and remove from the fire to cool. Beat the whites of 
the eggs very stiff. When the cooked mixture has cooled off 
slightly, fold in the beaten whites very lightly. 

Pour this mixture into small cups, one for each person, or 
into a larger dish. The cups or dish should have cold water 
standing in them, while the pudding is making. Set the 
sponge away to become cold ; on the ice if possible. Use the 
yolks for custard to serve with the sponge, page 245, or use 
them in cake or muffins. 

Lemon jelly. 

What and how much. 

Shredded gelatin \ box 

or 

Granulated gelatin 2 tablespoonfuls 

Lemon juice \ cup 

Cold water \ cup 

Boiling water z\ cups 

Sugar 1 cup 

How to make. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 20 minutes. 
Add the boiling water and sugar, and stir until it dissolves. 
Add the lemon juice and strain into a mold and set away to 
harden. When it is stiff, loosen from the sides of the mold 
(a cloth wrung out of hot water may be needed). Turn upon 
a plate and serve with whipped cream or soft custard. 



238 FOOD AND HEALTH 

Remarks. When a less acid fruit juice is used, take more 
juice and less water. The jelly can be made spongy by beat- 
ing in the white of eggs. When the jelly is firm, beat it and 
fold in the whites. 

Milk desserts. On the farm where milk is good and 
plentiful we cannot use too much of it. If we tire of 
drinking it, then we may use it with other materials, 
and still have all the food value of the milk. We learned 
about renneted milk in Lesson 4. 

Milk can be made into a molded pudding, stiffened 
with cornstarch, arrowroot, farina, sago, rice, gelatin, 
bread crumbs, sea moss. 

Flavors for milk desserts. One may use vanilla, 
almond, and lemon essence ; grated lemon rind or or- 
ange rind ; stick cinnamon, or ground cinnamon, nut- 
meg ; cocoa, or chocolate, or coffee ; caramel made from 
browned sugar ; and even a little fruit juice, if it is not 
too acid (the juice of a sweet orange with the rind is 
delicious in a milk pudding) ; raisins, figs, and dates. 
Cornstarch pudding. 

What and how much. 

Milk 2 cups 

Cornstarch 4 tablespoonfuls 

Sugar 3 to 4 tablespoonfuls 

Salt I teaspoonful 

Chocolate or powdered 1 ounce 

cocoa (if desired) 
Vanilla J teaspoonful 

How to make. You have seen your mother make laundry 
starch, have you not ? Perhaps you have done it yourself. 



THE HOME DINNER 239 

The cornstarch must be mixed with a little of the milk cold 
and then stirred into the hot milk to cook half an hour. When 
will you add the sugar and salt, and the chocolate if you use 




Courtesy of Dept. of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College, Columbia University. 
Fig. 106. — A cornstarch mold served with fruit. 

it ? Remember that if you put the vanilla in at first you 
will smell it as the pudding cooks. If it passes off as a fra- 
grance, you will not have it as a flavor. When will you add it ? 

Creamy rice pudding. 

What and how much. 

Rice (washed) \ cup 

Sugar \ cup 

Salt I teaspoonful 

Milk 4 cups 

Cinnamon \ teaspoonful 

Grating of nutmeg 

Seeded raisins \ cup 

How to make. This pudding needs long, slow cooking and is 
better when made from two or three quarts of milk. It is 



24 o FOOD AND HEALTH 

easier to make, when you scald the milk and cook the rice in it 
until it begins to swell. Grease the baking dish ; put in the 
rice with all the other materials. Cover the baking dish, and 
set it in a slow oven. This pudding cooks well in an Atkinson 
oven. Stir the pudding gently with a fork two or three times 
while it is baking. The baking should last for three or four 
hours or even more. At the very end remove the cover to 
brown the top, if you wish. 



Suet pudding. 






What and how much. 






Suet chopped 

OT 




i cup 


Beef fat 




i cup 


Raisins, currants, 


and citron sliced 


i cup 


Egg 
Sweet milk 




i 

i cup 


Molasses 




i cup 


Soda 

Salt 

Flour 

Bread crumbs 




I teaspoonful 
J teaspoonful 
I cup 

2j CUpS 



How to make. Skin, wash, and chop the suet, and dredge 
with flour. Wash, pick over, and seed the dried fruit, slice 
the citron if it is used, and dredge all with flour. Stir together 
the milk and molasses, sift the dry materials with the flour, 
and stir the liquid into the flour slowly. Add the suet, beating 
the mass thoroughly, and last put in the fruit, sprinkling in 
both the suet and the fruit as you stir. Fill a greased mold 
or pail f full, close tightly, and cook in a kettle of boiling 
water for three hours. Serve with foamy sauce. 

Baked Indian pudding. 

This is one of Grandmother Stark's specialties which she 
makes for church suppers and sends to her friends sometimes as 



THE HOME DINNER 241 

a present. Grandmother Stark loves to tell of the days when 
she used to see it baked in the old brick oven, and she insists 
that even the Atkinson cooker does not give quite the same 
flavor. She thinks, too, that the pudding is not perfectly made 
with less than a milk pan full of milk and with old-fashioned 
meal ; but she is much pleased when other people praise her 
puddings made of a smaller size. It is hardly worth while to 
bake it in a pan smaller than the two-quart size. Use an 
earthen baking dish. 

What and how much. 

Milk 2 quarts 

Indian meal J cup (or even \ ) 

Molasses (dark colored) § to 1 cup 

Salt 1 teaspoonful 

How to make. Scald half the milk, stir into it the meal 
mixed with a little cold milk, and cook until the mixture 
thickens a little. Add the molasses and salt. Pour into the 
greased baking dish, add the rest of the milk, cover, and put 
into a very slow oven. To be perfect this pudding should 
bake from six to eight hours, or overnight in the Atkinson 
oven. Brown the top at the last. It can be eaten hot or cold. 
This slow cooking seems to dissolve the Indian meal, whey 
is formed, and when the pudding cools this makes a jelly. 1 

What shall we do about pies ? When Miss Travers 
talked about pies to the Woman's Club at one of their 
meetings in the Pleasant Valley School, a very lively 
discussion followed. Mrs. Groves said that her husband 

1 Some people add an egg and butter, but this is not necessary. Others 
like the flavor of a little ginger. A fairly good pudding is made by using 
much more meal, cooking the milk and meal longer in a double boiler, and 
then baking for an hour, but it is very inferior to Grandmother Stark's 
pudding. 



242 FOOD AND HEALTH 

wanted pie three times a day. Another of the ladies 
said that her husband would like pie perhaps five times 
a day, between meals as well as at meals, but that the 
doctor had advised him to go without pie altogether. 

Miss Travers said that it is true of pie, as of any other 
food containing a large amount of fat and sugar, that 
we should not eat it too often. The fat and sugar 
give the pie a high food value. If the crust is porous 
and light, thoroughly baked, and then thoroughly mas- 
ticated, it has its place in the list of dishes from which 
the housekeeper makes the plans of her meals. A little 
baking powder makes the crust more porous. Do not 
eat pies every day, and remember to have pie at the 
end of the meal where there is not a large amount of 
protein and fat in other dishes. 

Some suggestions for making pies more digestible. 

i. With fruit pies use a deep dish and have a top 
crust over it. 

2. When you want a pie without a top, like pumpkin 
or squash pie, bake the under crust first, brushing on 
a little white of egg before you bake it. Then fill and 
bake again. 

3. Bake the pie crust in squares or diamonds or 
rounds by itself, and serve on a plate with cooked fruit. 

What can we use in place of pie crust ? A baking- 
powder crust makes a very good substitute for a pie 
crust, and, while your father may not like it so well at 
first, he probably will find it much better for him in the 
end. A light baking-powder crust can be used for the 



THE HOME DINNER 



243 




Courtesy ofDept. of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College, Columbia University. 
Fig. 107. — Squares of pie crust served with jam. 




Courtesy ofDept. of Foods and Cookery, Teachers College, Columbia University. 
Fig. 108. — Squares of pie crust served with fruit. 

top of a fruit or meat pie. Bake this kind of crust in 
a jelly-cake tin, making it rather thin, until it is quite 



244 F °0D AND HEALTH 

brown. Split, and put fruit between the crusts. This 
becomes a shortcake when more butter is used, but the 
ordinary baking-powder crust is rich enough for every- 
day use. The crust can be baked and cooled and served 
cold with the fruit, or it may be reheated and served. 

Making ice cream. If you have ice on the farm, you 
will find it is quite easy with a good freezer to make ice 
cream or sherbet on some hot day. There are a number 
of freezers for sale that are not expensive, and that 
will do the freezing in about twenty minutes. Mollie 
Stark and her brothers make their ice cream without 
a freezer, using a tin pail with a cover set in a tub. 
Mollie and her brothers divide the work in this way : 
the boys bring a piece of ice from the icehouse, put it 
into a heavy bag, and pound it. Mollie makes a custard 
by the recipe that follows, and when it is cooled off she 
puts it into the tin pail, but she does not have the pail 
more than two thirds full. Can you tell why ? The 
boys mix one part of coarse salt with three parts of ice, 
and cover the bottom of a wooden box with this. 
Mollie ties paper tightly over the cover of the pail, 
sets it in the box, and then packs the ice and salt all 
around it. The box is four or five inches bigger than 
the pail. Some of the ice and salt is put on the cover. 
Paper is laid over the salt and a clean old bed quilt is 
put over the whole. At the end of about fifteen minutes 
Mollie opens the pail, stirs the freezing custard with a 
spoon, and covers it up again as before. This has to 
be done several times, depending of course upon the 



THE HOME DINNER 



H5 



amount of ice cream that is being made. This method 
does not make the ice cream so smooth as the freezer 
where you turn the crank all the time, but it makes a 
very agreeable dessert. Here are two rules that Mollie 
uses. When the price of eggs is high, Mollie makes a 
mixture like a cornstarch pudding, using less corn- 
starch to the quart, and flavors it with chocolate or 
coffee, or stirs in some cut-up fruit half an hour before 
the ice cream is finished. Mollie sometimes uses 
orange juice or the sirup from canned peaches or berries 
in the sherbet. 



Custard ice cream. 




What and how much. 
Milk 
Sugar 
Eggs 
Vanilla 


1 quart 

J or | cup 

2 

1 tablespoonful 



How to make. Scald the milk and sugar together. Beat 
the eggs and stir a little of the hot milk into them, and then 
pour the beaten eggs into the hot milk. Stir steadily until 
the mixture thickens a little on the spoon. If the custard 
begins to curdle, take it off and beat it rapidly with a Dover 
egg beater. When it is cool and ready for freezing, stir in the 
vanilla. 1 

1 When Mollie wants to make a soft custard, she uses this rule, taking 
a pint of milk, two tablespoonfuls of sugar, one tablespoonful of corn- 
starch, and two eggs. You have made cornstarch pudding. Which 
will you cook first in the milk, the cornstarch, or the eggs ? Use only 
half a teaspoonful of the vanilla or other flavoring. This soft custard is 
very nice poured over cut-up oranges, 'or bananas, or peaches, or canned 
fruit. 



246 FOOD AND HEALTH 



Milk sherbet. 




What and how much. 




Milk 


4 cups 


Sugar 


i| cups 


Lemons 


juice of 



How to make. Mix juice and sugar, stirring constantly as 
you slowly add the milk. If the mixture should curdle, the 
curdle will disappear when frozen. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Look in the dictionary for the meaning of the word "dessert." 

2. Study a cook book and see what recipes there are for using 
milk in a pudding. 

3. In what puddings can you use skimmed milk just as well as 
whole milk ? 

4. Explain why we should be careful not to eat pie too often. 

5. Explain why the can of the ice cream freezer must not be 
filled up to the top before freezing. 

6. Can you explain why a mixture of ice and salt will freeze the 
cream when ice by itself would only cool it ? (See some book on 
physics.) 

7. We have cooked several kinds of food in a number of different 
ways. Make a list of cooking processes that we have used. After 
you have done this, look on page 294. 

Lesson 26 

cooking apparatus 

How can we save heat at dinner time, and other times ? 

It is at noon of a hot summer day that preparing 
dinner seems such a burden, and oh ! how hot that 
stove makes the kitchen. The class talked one day 



THE HOME DINNER 247 

about apparatus that would cook the food without 
heating the cook. 

Different ways of having heat for cooking. How 
interesting it would be if, at the moment you are reading 
this page, you could see all the ways in which people 
are cooking. Some one, somewhere, has a camp fire 
with a kettle boiling over it ; and, far away in some 
old-fashioned house, dinner is being cooked by the fire 
in the open fireplace. Somebody is turning a button, 
and presto ! a current of electricity runs along a wire 
fastened to a cooking utensil, and there is all the heat 
needed and no more, and no ashes, and no hard work. 
And between these two, the newest and the oldest 
fashions, there are coal stoves and wood stoves, natural 
and manufactured gas, kerosene and gasoline stoves, 
and steam cookers ; and we hear about fireless cookers 
and Atkinson cookers. 

What are you using ? Coal or wood in the winter for 
warmth as well as for cooking ? It needs a well-made 
stove for either, for no one can be expected to do good 
work with a poor stove. With the coal stove you must 
bring in coal and take out ashes, and space must be 
given to the coal bin and ash pit. Large ranges, resting 
upon the floor, have a " dump " which empties the ashes 
directly into the ash box in the cellar. A range the size 
of the one in the picture (see over) would serve for a 
family of five or six. It requires from 2 to 3 hods of coal 
per day. A hood should be placed above a large range, 
whether coal or wood, with a pipe into the chimney. 



248 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



Here is a picture (Fig. 109) showing a section of a coal 

stove that can be used for wood with a different grate. 

The coal range. The coal box at (1) has a lining that 

keeps the iron from burning out. The air enters at (2) 




Courtesy of Detroit Stove Works. 
Fig. 109. — A modern coal range, showing the parts and the air circulation. 

and passes out at (3), when the fire is first made. When 
you want to heat the oven, a damper is closed at (4), 
and the heated air then passes around the oven in the 
direction of the arrows. The coal is put in at (5), and 
the ashes shaken down at (6). 

Do you know that this kind of stove lets most of 
the heat go up the chimney, although less than in the 



THE HOME DINNER 249 

old-time fireplace ? We have to box in the heat to 
keep it. 

Cooking by kerosene. On page 12 is a picture (Fig. 
4) of a kerosene stove with wicks where the kerosene 
is made to burn with a blue flame. 1 

A blue flame always gives more heat than a yellow 
one. A yellow flame gives light, and it smokes more 
easily than the blue. The flame on this stove is very 
hot, the oil burns out slowly, and one gallon will last 
about 15 hours. If one is careless and raises the wick 
too high, then the flame grows yellow and smoky, and it 
spoils the wick and makes much trouble. Notice the 
picture (Fig. 4) of the oven which is placed on top of 
the stove for baking. 

This was one of the first summer comforts that the 
Stark family tried, and they were surprised to see how 
seldom a fire in the wood stove was needed. 

A friend who was interested in the school lunch gave 
a stove of this pattern to the Pleasant Valley School. 
The members of the Lunch Club took turns in keeping 
it clean, and they found that it saved time in the end 
to attend to it daily. 

Catching heat and keeping it in a box. The picture 
(Fig. no) that follows, shows one way of doing this. 
This plan was invented by Mr. Edward Atkinson of 
Boston, who wanted to teach us to save fuel and to im- 
prove some of our foods by cooking them slowly. The 

1 In many parts of the country the use of gasoline is forbidden. 
Stoves are made especially for it. 



250 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



heat comes from a round-wicked kerosene lamp. If you 
try to hold your hand over the chimney of a large lamp, 
you realize how much heat is given off ; really enough to 
cook with. Around the iron oven 
which holds the food there is a box 
or cover, large enough to leave a 
space between the inner oven and 
the outer box ; and the outer box 
is made of something that does not 
let the heat through ; so the heat 
is in a trap, and does the work of 
cooking. 

Food cooked in this way has a fine 
taste, because the flavor has not gone 
off in the air. 

A homemade Atkinson cooker. 
The Stark family made a cooker at 
home. They could not have the same 
kind of oven, because in the Atkinson ovens that one 
buys the outer box is made of a kind of fiber or pulp ; 
but they talked the matter over at home, and Mollie 
and John asked this question at school, " What can 
be used to keep heat in or out ? " Why do you have a 
wooden handle on a poker for the fire ? Why do you use 
a cloth holder for a flatiron or any hot metal ? Why do 
you want a blanket over you on a cool night ? Some sub- 
stances become hot, carry heat, and lose heat quickly ; 
and these are called " conductors " of heat : others heat 
slowly and cool slowly ; and those are " nonconductors." 




Fig. 1 10. — The Atkinson 
cooker, a plan for catch- 
ing heat and keeping it 
in a box. 



THE HOME DINNER 251 

For our oven cover, then,we want a nonconductor. The 
Starks took such an oven as we use on a kerosene stove ; 
they found a wooden box larger than the oven, and lined 
it with the kind of tin that is used for roofing. They 
made a hole in the bottom of the wooden box, where it 
would come just over the lamp, and on the bottom they 
put the tin both inside and outside the box, that the 
wood might not catch fire. As you know, wood is a 
poor conductor ; but more covering is needed for an 
oven than the wooden box only. 

The boys covered the box with many layers of paper, 
put on a neat outside cover of white oilcloth, and made 
a stand to hold the box, with a shelf below for the 
lamp. Whenever you want to keep a surface from giv- 
ing off heat, paint it white or use a white cover. A 
shiny black surface will radiate heat. This has been 
proved by experiment. 

At first Mrs. Stark was disappointed because the food 
came from the oven a pale rather than a rich brown. 1 
She found that, like all other conveniences, the cooker 
did not do all the work. But Mr. Stark declared that 
he should never know the old fowl cooked this way from a 
spring chicken, for it was so tender ; and that the brown 
bread, beans, and Indian pudding tasted more like the 
old-fashioned kind than any he had eaten for years. 
Slow cooking is the secret, or charm, in many dishes, 

1 The ready-made oven has a hole in the top with a cover, and the cover 
can be taken out when you want to brown something over. A hole can 
be put in the homemade cooker. 



252 FOOD AND HEALTH 

developing a richness of flavor that intense heat does 
not. Mollie became very expert in using this cooker, 
and could get a whole dinner with it, starting the cook- 
ing early in the morning, or boiling or browning one or 
two things on the other oil stove. This gave time for 
work in the garden, or for sewing and reading under the 
trees. 

They were not afraid of leaving the lamp burning 
all night ; and it was comfortable on a winter morning 
to take from the oven, " piping " hot and ready to eat, 
the cereal, and scalloped potato, and fish started the 
night before. If you could visit the Stark family, they 
would advise you to have such a cooker, too. 

Fireless cookers. One day at school the Pleasant 
Valley pupils made a fireless cooker. This kind of 
cooker has another way of keeping heat in a box, and it 
was used many years ago in Sweden. Some traveler in 
Sweden describes the way he saw a fowl cooked. The 
dressed fowl was put in a kettle of water, the water was 
brought to the boiling point on the stove or fire, and 
then the kettle itself was covered and placed in a box, 
and the box was covered with some nonconducting 
material. Where is the heat ? In the kettle of water ; 
and, as it cannot escape, it cooks the fowl ! Here is 
a picture (Fig. in) of a fireless cooker that can be 
made at home. 

A fireless cooker made at school. The pupils of the 
Pleasant Valley School made one from two wooden 
boxes, one three or four inches smaller than the other. 



THE HOME DINNER 



253 



They filled in the space between with sawdust below and 
around the sides. The inner box was lined with white 
table oilcloth. They were careful to take a box of the 
size and shape to 

hold two pails. They ' ^- 

could not put saw- 
dust over the pails, 
and so they made a 
cover from an old 
clean blanket, and 
covered it with the 
table oilcloth, too. 
When the hot ket- 
tles were placed in 
the inner box, the 
woolen cover was 
laid over them, and 
the larger box cover 
fastened down. The 
outer box was 
painted white. 

Some of the 
ready-made cookers have a place to slip in a hot iron 
or soapstone, and hot bricks can be put underneath 
the kettle in the homemade. 

Other ways to make a fireless cooker. There are 
other things of which the home cooker can be made. 
Agnes Groves used an old trunk for the outer box, and 
painted it, as it looked rather shabby. The space be- 




Courtesy of Winthrop Normal and Industrial 
College, Rockhill, S.C. 

Fig. in. — A fireless cooker made at home. 



254 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



tween the trunk and the inner box was filled with paper, 
pressed in firmly. She pleased her mother by having 
a stew for dinner one day. First she browned the meat 
and vegetables in a frying pan on the kerosene stove, 
put them in a hot earthenware jar with the season- 
ings, covered them with boiling hot water, covered the 
jar closely, set it in the cooker on a brick heated on 
the other burner of the oil stove, and closed the cooker. 
This was done by half past seven, and at twelve o'clock 
the stew was ready. 

There was room for another kettle in the cooker, and 
in that Agnes put peas shelled the evening before. 

Agnes also tried cook- 
ing cereal overnight, 
but she was careful to 
let the cereal boil on 
the oil stove long 
enough to thicken be- 
fore it went into the 
cooker, and then the 
kettle of cereal was 
placed in a larger kettle 
of hot water, like a 
double boiler. She 
thought the cereal was 
better when the hot brick was used. 

Agnes and Marjorie used to compare the " fireless " 
and the Atkinson cooker, and they decided that the 
Atkinson can do more kinds of work than the fireless, 




Courtesy of the Caloric Co. 

Fig. 112. — One fireless cooker on the market. 



THE HOME DINNER 255 

although the Atkinson uses more fuel. The Atkinson 
cooker is sometimes called the Aladdin oven. Can 
you tell why ? Did you ever hear of Aladdin and his 
wonderful lamp ? 

Steam cookers. Barbara Oakes reported at school 
that her mother has no patience with either of those 
contrivances, but that she likes a steam cooker in hot 
weather, and can get a whole dinner over one burner 
of the kerosene stove. On page 98 is a picture (Fig. 
48) of a steam cooker like Mrs. Oakes'. 

Some people like one kind of machine and some 
another ; but we may all help ourselves greatly if we 
try some experiments, and do not expect too much 
from any one contrivance. 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Can you explain why the fireless cooker will not "brown" 
food ? Can you ever "brown" anything in water ? 

2. Why does a hole in the Atkinson cooker at the top help the 
browning process ? 

3. Make a sketch showing a cross section of the cooker made 
at the Pleasant Valley School. 

4. Make a list of nonconducting materials ; of good conduc- 
tors. 

5. Which is a better conductor of heat, air or water ? 

6. Will a kettle of hot food cool faster in the air or in running 
cold water ? Why ? 

7. Bake one potato, and boil another of the same size. Which 
cooks faster ? Why ? 

8. How much oil does your illuminating lamp hold ? How 
long will it burn ? Find the cost of kerosene, and then you can tell 
how much it costs to run the Atkinson cooker per hour. 



256 FOOD AND HEALTH 

9. How much does it cost per hour to run a blue-flame oil 
stove ? 

10. Can you find out how much it costs per hour for coal or 
wood ? 

Lesson 27 
the care of food 

How shall we care for food after dinner ? 

This is a question after every meal ; but there is 
usually more food to put away after dinner, and more 
careful planning is needed then. 

When Mollie and Marjorie cooked the dinner we 
studied in Lesson 22, they began to plan for the care 
of food afterward, at the very beginning of operations, by 
seeing that there were no flies to light on any food placed 
on the kitchen table. The home-making class had 
discussed the care of food in the home, and Mollie and 
Marjorie found that they could apply it all to this par- 
ticular dinner. 

How shall we take care of our food ? Here is a simple 
rule. Keep food clean; keep food cool; keep food dry ; 
keep out insects, mice, and rats. 

How shall we keep food clean ? Let us begin with 
ourselves, the cooks. Mollie and Marjorie were pleas- 
ant to look at ; they were so shining with cleanliness 
themselves. Marjorie had washed her hair the day 
before when she came from school ; but before beginning 
work she brushed it tightly back, braided it, and tied 
a clean ribbon around her front hair to keep back stray 



THE HOME DINNER 



257 



locks. Both of the girls, of course, had clean faces, their 
dresses and aprons were spotless, and each clean apron 
had a pocket in it, with a clean 
handkerchief in the pocket. They 
scrubbed their hands, used tooth- 
picks for their fingernails, and pinned 
on fresh hand towels at one side of 
the apron. Mollie said when she 
washed her hands before she sat 
down at the dinner table that she 
believed it was the twelfth time at 
least. A safe rule is this : when- 
ever you are to touch food with the 
fingers, wash them. It is not con- 
sidered good manners when in com- 
pany to touch one's hair or face, 
and one should never handle food af- 
ter touching one's person in any way. 
Of course, Mrs. Allen's kitchen 
spotlessly clean after the breakfast 




Courtesy of Mrs. Hetty S. Browne. 



Fig. 



and 



13. — Neatly dressed 
for cooking. 



pantry were 
so there was no 
cleaning to do after the last fly had been banished. 

Just as this had been accomplished, Frank Allen 
came in with the sweet corn and potatoes, and in came 
a fly, too ! So Frank killed the fly on the kitchen table, 
and then washed off the table at his sister's request. 
There was a pan in the sink to hold clean soapsuds for 
washing off whatever needed the washing. 

A place for washing hands and face. Just outside 
the Aliens' kitchen is an entry where washing of hands 



258 FOOD AND HEALTH 

and face, and brushing hair can be done, because it is 
not a cleanly habit to do this in the kitchen. Before 
the Aliens had running water, there was a stand in this 
entry, with a basin for the hands and face, and a pump 
outside ; but, when the water was put in, a basin with 
running water was placed in this entry, too. There is 
a looking-glass, and in a basket hanging on the wall 
below are some small towels made of the toweling used 
for roller towels, as Mrs. Allen does not believe in having 
different people use one towel. Each towel is large 
enough for wiping face and hands, and is used only once 
and thrown into another basket. Mrs. Allen has a 
washing machine, and puts these towels through a 
wringer to smooth them, and does not iron them. 
Muddy shoes must be wiped off outside, or, when they 
are very dirty, they are changed for comfortable dry 
shoes that hang in a shoe bag on the wall of the entry, 
and the muddy rubbers, and boots are left in the shed. 
The boys thought this very fussy at first ; but boys do 
not really dislike being clean, when it is not too much 
trouble, and besides they found the dry shoes very com- 
fortable. To keep all dirt out of the kitchen is one 
way to keep food clean. 

Washing off food. Even when we gather our own 
fruit and vegetables with clean hands, there needs to 
be a careful washing in clean water to free the food from 
grit and small insects. A small quantity of salt or vine- 
gar in the water helps to remove any tiny insect. 

When Marjorie began to prepare the piece of meat 



THE HOME DINNER 



259 



for the pot roast, she held it under the faucet and thor- 
oughly washed off the surface of the meat. If there 
had not been running water, she would have washed it 
off in a pan of water, with a little salt added. Mollie 
remarked that the butcher was very particular himself 
about the meat, but Marjorie said that one could not 
be overclean with meat. 

Keeping food cool. When the table was cleared after 
dinner, the most important point was putting away the 
foods that would most 
easily spoil, — the meat, f£LT ^ 
the butter, the milk. The 
meat had been hot when 
it was put on the table, 
and it was still warm. 
Mrs. Allen did not put it 
into the ice box warm, 
but, as there were no flies 
in the kitchen, she stood 
the meat in the breeze 
by the window to cool it 
off. If there had been 
no breeze, she would have 
returned the meat to the 
pot and set the pot in a 
pan of water. 

Ice for keeping food. 
Ice is one of the great comforts in summer, and is a 
safeguard of our health. Remember in the lesson on 







?/MC L/N/NG- 















































;i v/Ci 


T r 


*(<■ 


r 






























1 


1J II II II II II II 









0PM A/ P/PE 

Courtesy of New York State College of 
Agriculture at Cornell University. 

Fig. 114. — Mrs. Groves has an inexpensive 
home-made ice box. 



260 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



preserving fruit that we learned how the bacteria that 
spoil our food do not flourish in the cold. More and 

more are farmers 
planning to cut ice 
and store it. Mr. 
Groves of Pleasant 
Valley dammed up 
a brook, making a 
small pond, cleaned 
out the vegetable 
matter, and found 
that he could take 
enough clean ice 
from the pond to 
last all summer. 
Mr. Groves fenced in 
his ice pond to keep 
out the farm animals, 
and he put in the 
dam at a spot in the 
brook above the place 

Courtesy of Grand Ravids Refrigerator Co. wV|pr"P fhp COWS 3Tld 
Fig. 115. — Mrs. Allen's refrigerator is built with 1 . ' 1 • 1 

double walls rnade of nonconducting materials, worses gO tO QnnK. 

He made a double 
wall and roof to one small building on the place, and 
packed the ice down in sawdust. Sometimes two or 
three landowners can combine in ice cutting. One man 
in Pleasant Valley adds to his income by selling ice to 
his neighbors. 




THE HOME DINNER 



261 



The farmers who sell milk, cream, and butter find 
that the better condition of their products makes it 
pay to have ice. 

A well-built refrigerator. Mrs; Allen was very happy 
with her new refrigerator, and told Mollie that the 
difference between a summer with ice and without ice, 
was astounding. The picture (Fig. 115) shows Mrs. 
Allen's refrigerator, which stands in the coolest part of 
the pantry. It is important to have air circulating in 




United States Department of Commerce, Circular of the Bureau of Standards, No. 55. 
Fig. 116. — Diagram showing the circulation in two used types of refrigerator. 

the refrigerator. The drawings (Fig. 116) show the 
movement of the air in two refrigerators and the cool- 
est place in each. 



262 FOOD AND HEALTH 

Mrs. Allen's refrigerator is built with double walls 
made of nonconducting materials, and has ten layers 
of such in the walls, one of them a closed-in air space. 
The closets for the food are enamel lined. This is 
nonabsorptive, and may be kept perfectly clean. A 
large refrigerator is more economical of ice than a small 
one, and in the end more than balances the few dollars 
extra that must be paid for the larger size. Select the 
coolest spot that you have for the refrigerator. 

Care of a refrigerator. Always wash off the block 
of ice before putting it into the ice chamber. Wash 
out the ice chamber once a week, and pour a solu- 
tion of washing soda down the waste pipe. The food 
chambers should be washed out once a week and dried, 
and no spilled food allowed to remain a moment. Do 
not leave the doors open. Have a strong ice pick for 
breaking ice. 

And when we cannot have ice ? Perhaps there is a 
well. Then you can hang very clean pails or glass 
fruit jars in the well that will hold some food at least. 
This is a simple old-fashioned way ; but be sure that 
the ropes are strong, and the pails tightly closed. It 
is always a sad event when milk spills into the water. 

If the water comes from a spring in pipes, you have 
an overflow that can be used for cooling food. 

What shall we say about a cool cellar for food ? For 
the sake of the family the cellar should be dry, well 
aired, and not cold and damp. Even a dry, cemented 
cellar is cooler than the ground floor of the house ; but 



THE HOME DINNER 



263 



it is not cold in the way that the old-time farmhouse 
cellar used to be. When the Stark family made their 
old cellar into a dry new cellar, they felt that they could 
not plan for an ice house that year. They dug a place 
below the level of the cellar and cemented it ; they cut 
a trapdoor in the kitchen floor and made a set of shelves 
to run up and down on pulleys from the kitchen into the 
small subcellar. This may seem more trouble than it 
is worth, but Mrs. Stark and Mollie did not think so. 

A box fastened outside the window by strong iron 
brackets gives a handy place for cooling food, and for 
keeping some 
foods that 
do not spoil 
quickly. It is 
easily made 
from a water- 
tight wooden 
box, painted 
outside and in, 
with the open- 
ing toward the 
window, having 

a CUrtain OI Courtesy of New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. 

table oilcloth. Fig. 117. — These shelves inside a window give a place for 
. . r cooling food. Netting must be used to keep out flies. 

A piece 01 

wire netting set in the bottom of the box lets in the air. 

Remember, too, that evaporation cools. In tropic 

countries water is cooled in porous earthen jars which 




264 FOOD AND HEALTH 

hang in the veranda. When all other means are miss- 
ing, put the food to be cooled in a jar, wrap a clean cloth 
around and over the jar, put one end of the cloth in a 
basin of water, and stand all in a window. 

Keeping food dry. This means having dry walls 
and floors. Have jars and boxes for keeping your ma- 
terials, label them, and place them in neat rows. Even 
when food of certain kinds should be kept moist for a 
time, they still should stand in a dry place. For ex- 
ample, we may wish to keep bread moist by wrapping 
it in paper, but we must keep the bread box dry and 
clean. 

Mice and insects. It must, indeed, be a well-built 
house that has no visitors of this kind. Watch for 
cracks and holes ; and, if you find them, use metal over 
them. Try traps for mice and rats, and buy poison 
recommended by the druggist ; only be careful, then, 
of other animals. 

The Woman's Club of Pleasant Valley offered a prize 
for something that would actually keep off ants, and as 
yet no one has taken the prize. Look for ant hills out- 
side and pour in kerosene. In the Starks' old home 
there were tiny red ants that had their home in some 
timber that could not be reached. The only trap for 
them was a saucer of fat in the pantry, in which they 
collected by thousands. Borax and other powders are 
recommended, but Mollie Stark remarked that the 
Stark ants seemed to be especially fond of borax. In one 
old house they could do nothing better than to put each 



THE HOME DINNER 



265 



of the four legs of a table in a pan of water, and stand the 
food on the table. 

Cleaning off the table. Mollie and Marjorie put the 
scraps of food from the plates into the clean-food scrap 
pail to be taken out to the chickens. The pieces of 
bread from the bread plate were returned to the bread 




Courtesy of the New York Agricultural College at Cornell University. 
Fig. 118. — A broad piazza for rest after work. 

box to be used for toast, and the butter was put in a small 
bowl to be used for cooking. The left-over mashed 
potato was kept for potato cakes ; and the meat and 
dessert were finally set away in the refrigerator. The 
sweet corn was all eaten, but the cobs were given to 
the chickens to enjoy. Later they were to be collected 
and burned. 

You know that the food remnants, when the farm 



266 FOOD AND HEALTH 

animals have had their turn, will serve as fertilizer for 
plant life. After the bones have been picked, keep them 
together in a barrel, and finally bury or burn them. 
Have a compost heap properly covered where the un- 
eaten fragments will decompose and make fertilizer, or 
bury them at once if preferred. 

When the two girls had finished all the work, and went 
to the broad piazza for rest, Marjorie said, " Isn't this 
fine training for a girl ! Better than mathematics." 
And Mollie added, " Do you know, there's a kind of 
mathematics in it all, I do believe." Then Grandmother 
remarked, " Any reason why you shouldn't have the 
book kind and this kind, too ? " 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Why is it so important to take pains in caring for food after 
every meal ? 

2. How do you dispose of food waste at home ?' 

3. What do you do with tin cans when you use canned food ? 

4. Explain why food must be kept cool and dry. 

5. How does a refrigerator keep food cool ? 

6. Can you explain what Mollie meant when she said there was 
a kind of mathematics in getting a dinner ? 

REVIEW 

1. Give a simple rule for making a dinner menu. 

2. Plan the work in preparing a dinner for next Saturday. 

3. Do you think we need meat as a food ? 

4. Is there anything to be careful about in buying meat ? 

5. Give two experiments that show the efFect of different 
methods of cooking upon meat. 



THE HOME DINNER 267 

6. When meat is tough, can you improve it by cooking ? 

7... Give directions for cooking tender meat. 

8. You have a five-pound roast. Tell exactly how to prepare 



it. 



9. You are planning to have steak for dinner. How will you 
cook it ? 

10. In the country where one raises beef or pork, a large 
quantity may be killed at one time. How may this meat be 
preserved ? 

11. Tell how to cook corned beef. 

12. Do you know what foodstuffs vegetables give us ? 

13. What does cooking do for vegetables ? 

14. Tell in what way and how long to cook all the common vege- 
tables. 

15. Tell how to make two milk desserts and two fruit desserts. 

16. Have you ever run a fireless cooker ? Can you describe 
such a cooker ? 

17. Think of what you can do to be sure the food in your home 
is clean. 

18. What conveniences will you have for keeping food clean ? 

19. What are some of the important things about using ice ? 
About the care of the refrigerator ? 

20. What are the points of a good cellar ? 

21. What can we cook on Saturday to save work on Sunday ? 




CHAPTER VI 



OTHER FACTS ABOUT FOOD 



Lesson 28 



A STUDY CF IOO-CALORIE PORTIONS 

How may we know just how much food to give to the family 
every day, and how can we measure it ? 

One rainy Saturday when Marjorie Allen was look- 
ing over her notebook of lessons on foods, sanitation, 
and cookery, and putting together in one place every- 
thing that she had studied and learned about meals 
from her teacher and from her mother, she found that 
there were facts enough to fill several pages. 

If you yourself will review the lessons in the five chap- 
ters of this book and recall the talks at school with 
your teacher, you will find that you have learned quite 
a little about the three meals a day and your own school 
luncheon. 

268 



OTHER FACTS ABOUT FOOD 269 

When Marjorie had finished this task, however, she 
sat quietly a few minutes, looking rather puzzled ; and 
then she asked the question at the beginning of this 
lesson. 

Mrs. Allen replied that she herself had learned by ex- 
perience, and that in a large family the left-overs can 
always be used in some good way. But Marjorie had 
in mind something more exact than this, as a result of 
the talks at school about food for body building and 
energy ; and she already had grasped the idea that dif- 
ferent people require not only different kinds of food, 
but different quantities. 

" It seems to me," said Marjorie, " that there must 
be some way to measure just the amount for Grand- 
mother, for you and Father, and for all of us children." 

" Why don't you ask Miss James ? " said her mother. 

" I am so glad you wanted to ask that question," 
remarked Miss James, when Marjorie brought this 
thought to the class. 

How is temperature measured by a thermometer ? 
" How would you explain the use of the thermometer 
to some one who did not understand ? " was Miss 
James' first question. 

We learned long ago that the amount of heat in things 
around us changes from time to time, sometimes very 
quickly. Take water, for instance : how rapidly it 
heats and begins to boil over a good fire, and how soon 
it freezes when the weather is cold. The words in 
common use for the different degrees of heat are cold, 



270 FOOD AND HEALTH 

cool, hot, warm, tepid, lukewarm, and so on. These 
words are not exact, however ; and people found it nec- 
essary to measure heat in some definite way. Mercury 
and alcohol are substances that change very rapidly 
with only a slight increase or decrease in temperature. 
They change in bulk and expand or shrink. Look at a 
thermometer, and see that the mercury is inclosed in a 
bulb and a tube, fastened upon a scale. Who made 
the scale ? Several people, and so we have thermome- 
ters (heat measures) of more than one kind. The 
Centigrade is the best because it is the simplest. 
The freezing point of water is called zero ; and the 
boiling point of water, ioo ; and there are one hundred 
steps (Centigrade) between, which we call degrees. 
Scientists prefer to use Centigrade. We should become 
familiar with the Centigrade thermometer in daily life. 
In America, however, we are slow to change in matters 
of measure and weight. The French, who planned the 
decimal system of weights and measures, and who use 
them in buying and selling, are much more sensible 
than we. In America and England, the Fahrenheit 
is used. This scale was made and used by Gabriel 
Daniel Fahrenheit. The freezing point is at 3 2° above 
the zero of this scale, and the boiling point at 212 
above ; and there are 180 degrees (Fahrenheit) between. 
So you see, one degree Fahrenheit is equal to f degrees 
Centigrade. 

Here is the picture (Fig. 119) of a thermometer with 
both Fahrenheit and Centigrade scales. You should 



OTHER FACTS ABOUT FOOD 



271 



learn to use the latter just as soon as possible. Do you 
not consider decimals easier and more convenient than 
common fractions ? 

The degree on the scale of a thermometer is one 
kind of heat measure. We have another measure 
for the needs of our bodies and the energy contained 
in our foods ; for we calculate the amount of food 



150 -e 



100 



50 



— Melting point of common solder 
350 



300 



250 



y. 212Boiling point of water at normal pressure 
200 



159 Pasteurizing' milk 

^PNormal temperature of human body (98.5) 

— Rooms Where occupants are not exercising 
50 
U.3Z Freezing' point of water 

10 

-10 
20, 
M Freezing point of mercury 



Fig. 119. — Two common temperature scales, viz. Fahrenheit and Centigrade. 
On the Centigrade scale the freezing point and normal boiling point of water 
are, respectively, o° and ioo°; on the Fahrenheit scale these points are 32 
and 212 ; thus i° Centigrade is equal to i.8° Fahrenheit. 



272 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



we need by the amount of energy it will furnish the 
body. 

What is a calorimeter r Scientists have learned to 
measure heat given off by shutting up some person, or 




Courtesy of Professor Graham Lusk. 

Fig. 120. — Respiration calorimeter, open. From the "Journal of 
Biological Chemistry." 



lower animal, in a machine where he has air and is 
quite comfortable for a time. Here is a picture (Fig. 
120) of one machine called a calorimeter (heat measure) 
for a small animal. You can see how elaborate and 
delicate a machine it is, and it does exactly record the 



OTHER FACTS ABOUT FOOD 273 

heat coming from the body of the animal shut into this 
cage. When you are in high school or college, you can 
understand the workings of the calorimeter. But we 
will now accept the fact that the scientist can measure 
in a calorimeter the energy of our bodies and the amount 
of energy given off a day. 

Then, too, the scientist finds the energy in the 
food, by burning it in another kind of machine which 
also measures the amount of heat in some one kind 
of food. This has been done with all the common 
materials. 

What is a calorie ? The scientist can now say of a 
given person that he needs so much energy daily, and 
that a certain amount of a certain food will give so much 
energy. But what words can he use to tell you and me ? 
The degree Centigrade will not measure this. So the 
scientist says, " I must have a heat unit, something like 
the degree of a thermometer scale, or the inch on a yard- 
stick. I will take for my heat unit the amount of heat 
required to make one pound of water warmer by four 
degrees Fahrenheit ; that is, the amount that will raise 
its temperature four degrees, or a gram of water one 
degree Centigrade. This unit I will call a calorie from 
the Latin word for heat, ' calor.'" 

Miss Travers explained the calorie quite simply one 
day at the Mothers' Club ; but one of the mothers said 
that her husband and sons were six feet tall, weighed 
about one hundred eighty pounds each, and were all 
satisfied with the good square meals she gave them, 



274 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



and that she shouldn't bother with this kind of thing. 
Mrs. Allen said very quietly that her husband found it 

convenient to study calories 

in feeding his pigs, and that 

she herself thought it might 

be well to try this method 

with her family ! So Mrs. 

Allen and Marjorie had 

many pleasant evenings 

studying this way of plan- 
ning meals. 

Of course, no busy mother 

will stop to calculate calories 

for every meal every day, 

but a little study will check 

up her daily practice. Mrs. 

Allen had been worried 

about her second little girl, 

who was under weight, and 

growing thinner. She 

studied the question of ioo 
calorie portions and found that the child was short some 
four hundred calories. Alice seemed not to be able to 
eat much more in bulk at one meal, but Mrs. Allen per- 
suaded her to take more butter and cream, and also 
two or three eggs daily for their body-building quality. 
Alice had not enough building material or energy in 
her food before this to keep up the growth in height, 
and also in weight. On the other hand, Mr. Allen had 





Drawn by Miss 
Florence Hunt. 



Fig. 121. — Im- 
proper weight. 



Drawn by Miss 
Florence Hunt. 

FlG. 122. — 
Proper weight. 



OTHER FACTS ABOUT FOOD 



275 



been troubled at the in- 
crease in his weight, which 
seemed to be in the form 
of unnecessary fat, in spite 
of his exercise. So Mrs. 
Allen planned for him 
food that contained a 
lower number of calories 
but still had bulk enough 
to satisfy his appetite. 

What did Miss Travers 
mean by a 100-calorie 
portion : The amount of 
food that would give one 
calorie is so small that it is 
more practical to measure 
portions giving one hun- 
dred calories. 

Study this picture first, 
for here are several of our 
common foods in amounts 
yielding energy equal to 
100 calories. The egg is 
the exception, the energy 
being only 75 calories. 
Xotice (Fig. 123) first that 
there is a great difference 
in the bulk of the differ- 
ent foods. Look at the 




276 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



lettuce, and at the half tablespoonful of butter and 
lumps of sugar. We could not live on a bulky food 
like the lettuce, or a condensed food like the butter ; 
but we must have a mixed diet to furnish all the 
energy we need. 

Here is a table that states what some people should 
have. Remember that this is an average. Have you 
studied averages in arithmetic ? 

FOOD REQUIREMENTS FOR A DAY 



Members of Family 



Man ...... 

Woman 

Girl 

Boy 

Boy 

Total requirements 



Age 



40 
38 
l6. 
12 

6 



Weight, Pounds 



154 
I20 
I IO 

75 
40 



Total Calories 



2,680 
2,l6o 
2,200 
2,250 
1,600 



10,890 



Using cream and butter. Mrs. Allen gives an extra 
amount of cream and butter to the little girl who is 
under weight. She makes the cream so appetizing by 
whipping it and sweetening it with a little honey that 
Alice eats a few spoonfuls gladly with a piece of bread 
for her dessert. Do you think that it is extravagant to 
use these materials ? On the farm, if you sell dairy 
products, you have a way of disposing of both the 
cream and butter at a good price. If, however, the 
milk of one cow is kept for home use, part of the milk 



OTHER FACTS ABOUT FOOD 



277 



can be set for cream to be used on the morning cereal 
or with some dessert. The skimmed milk can be used 
for cooking, and, if need be, beef fat or even chicken fat 
added, when these have been nicely tried out. Cream 
is a digestible form of fat for children and for older peo- 
ple who cannot eat fat pork. You can see that cream 



Ur 


1 1 




- 


■WShS-bJii 


«% 



A . Fowler, Photographer. 
Fig. 124. — joo-calorie portions of milk and cream. 

No. Kind Weight of Portion, Ounces 

1. Cream (18.5%) 1.8 

2. Whole milk 5.1 

3. Skim milk 9.6 

4. Buttermilk 9.9 

is cheaper than butter, because the butter requires 
labor ; and you must never make the mistake of think- 
ing that a woman's time does not count. It is some- 
times a high price to pay. 

More about the cost of food. It is very difficult when 
we use food raised on our own place to calculate how 
much it costs. There are some facts about food 



278 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



economy that we all ought to learn, because it is true 
that some kinds of food are always cheaper than others. 
Bread and cereals give us more nutriment for the money 
than meat, because the supply is larger and less labor 
is used in producing them. Here is a table that shows 
you the relation of money and food value received in 
a few common foods : 



AMOUNTS OF PROTEIN AND ENERGY OBTAINED FOR IO CENTS EX- 
PENDED FOR BREAD AND OTHER FOODS AT CERTAIN ASSUMED 
PRICES PER POUND 1 



Food Materials 



Wheat bread 
Cheese .... 

Beef, average ' . 
Porterhouse steak 
Dried beef . . 
Eggs ...... 

Milk .... 

Potatoes . . . 
Apples . . . . 



Price 



5 cents 
22 cents 
20 cents 
25 cents 
25 cents 
24 cents 

9 cents 
60 cents 
i-| cents 



per lb. 
per lb. 
per lb. 
per lb. 
per lb. 
per lb. 
per qt. 
per bu. 
per lb. 



10 Cents 
will Buy 



Ounces 
32.0 

7-3 
8.0 
64 
6.4 
IO.O 

38-3 
160.O 
I06.7 



10 Cents' Worth 
will Contain 



Protein 



Ounces 
2.9 

1.9 
1.2 

i-3 
.1 

1.3 

1.2 



A Fuel 
Value of 



Calories 
24OO 

886 
467 
444 
315 
198 

736 
2950 
1270 



In a general way we can say that the more labor needed, 
the more the food costs. If there is a small supply 
of some food material and many people want it, then the 
price is high ; and when the season is bad or some dis- 



1 TJ. S. Department of Agriculture, Farmers' Bulletin 487. 



OTHER FACTS ABOUT FOOD 279 

ease attacks the food, the supply becomes short and the 
price goes up. 

Here is another table that shows how the calories 
may be divided among the foods served at the three 
meals : 

Food ioo-Calorie Portions 

Milk 20 (6 for each child, the rest for the 

adults) 
Cereal 5 

Eggs (for children) 2 (counting f portion per egg) 

Fruit 5 

Green vegetables 2 

Meat or meat substitute 5 

Bread 15 

Butter 15 

Suppose now that each one of you study her own 
family. Take the three meals a day that you are likely 
to have, using very simple dishes. From the tables 
given, see if you can decide if your family is having about 
the right amount. 

This is a hard problem indeed, but your teacher may 
use it for an arithmetic lesson just as Miss James did. 1 

EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Explain the meaning of the word "calorie" to some one 
who has never heard the word before. 

2. Explain why it is important to think about calories in plan- 
ning food for a meal. 

1 For further work of this kind, see Foods and Household Manage- 
ment, Kinne-Cooley, and Laboratory Handbook for Dietetics, and Food for 
the Family, Mary Swartz Rose, The Macmillan Co. 



2 8o FOOD AND HEALTH 

3. Why is the 100-calorie portion of lettuce so much larger 
than the 100-calorie portion of meat, butter, and sugar ? 

4. Can you decide what kind of meals Mrs. Allen gave to her 
husband that would lower the number of calories ? 

5. Why did Mr. Allen need fewer calories in his diet ? 

Lesson 29 

buying and selling foods 

On the farm we raise much of our own food, but there are some 
things that we must buy. What ought we to learn about buying 
food ? What can a girl do about selling food products ? 

It is very easy for people living in the country to buy 
many articles by mail, for there are large firms that 
send out catalogues of everything that is needed about 
the house and farm. Miss Travers from the State 
College said that we should be careful to send our orders 
to firms that are known to be good. It is possible that 
some things are made under conditions that are bad for 
the workers, and the goods be thus made unsanitary for 
the buyers. 

Miss Travers told the club that her college had 
studied carefully the question of buying by mail, and 
had found that, when the women bought in the nearest 
town, they did quite as well in regard to price, and had 
the advantage of seeing what they were purchasing. 
On the other hand, Miss Travers appreciated the fact 
that, in winter weather and when work at home is heavy, 
ordering by mail is much more convenient. 

In buying food it is an economy, when there is storage 



OTHER FACTS ABOUT FOOD 



281 



room, to order large quantities from a wholesale dealer, 
— as sugar and flour, by the barrel. 

Honest weights and measures. When we buy food 
in packages, in cans or bottles, we want to be sure that 
we are given the correct weight or measure. Is it not a 
good thing that our Government at Washington is help- 
ing us in this way ? On May 11, 1914, at Washington, 




United States Department of Commerce, Circular of the Bureau of Standards, No. 55. 

Fig. 125. — Weights and measures that all housekeepers are advised to use. 

D.C., the regulations were signed which make the man- 
ufacturers tell the weight, volume, and contents clearly 
on their packages of food. " This applies to the whole 
country. The law itself was passed in 1913, but no one 
was made to pay the penalty for disobedience until 
September, 19 14. Some states and cities have laws of 
this kind. The Bureau of Commerce has also pub- 
lished a pamphlet telling about household weights and 
measures. Here is a picture (Fig. 125) of the weights and 
measures that all housekeepers are advised to use. For 



282 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



there is only one way that you can be absolutely sure ; 
that is, to measure and weigh what you have bought. 
One of the business men of Pleasant Valley was so in- 
terested in this pamphlet that he bought a set of scales 
and measures for the school, that the pupils might learn 
how to weigh and measure accurately, and to test pack- 
ages. The pictures 
that follow show 
some of the frauds 
used by dealers. 
One of the tricks 
of the trade is to 
use liquid measure 
instead of dry 
measure for certain 
food materials. 
You can see what a 
difference it makes 
in the beans in 
Figure 126. Look 
at the picture (Fig. 
127) of the bottles. 
Is it not strange that the bottle that looks the smallest 
holds the most ? Miss James said, " If you are tempted 
to buy some flavoring that seems to be cheaper than 
another, you had better find out whether you are 
really getting as much for your money." 

Cheap brands of food are often made of poor material. 
Ask the Woman's Club to write to the State University 




Fig. 



United States Department of Commerce, Circular 
of the Bureau of Standards, No. 55. 

126. — See what a difference it makes to use 
liquid instead of dry measure for beans. 



OTHER FACTS ABOUT FOOD 



283 



for advice in regard to reliable dealers. We have pure 
food laws in our country, but we must learn to obey 
and enforce them. 

Clean food, again. It is important in buying foods 
to consider cleanliness as well as the exact measure or 




United States Department of Commerce, Circular of the Bureau of Standards, No. 55. 

Fig. 127. — Three bottles of extract (front and side views). This shows the 
impossibility of correctly estimating the quantity of contents from apparent 
size of the container. The bottle which is apparently smallest holds the 
most, and vice versa. 



weight. Clean milk and meat we have already talked 
about. It is not wise to buy salted almonds or any 
nut meats taken out of the shell, because sometimes 
these are prepared in uncleanly places. Crack your 
own nuts with a hammer, and take out the meats with 
clean hands and a nutpick. Fruits that come from 



284 FOOD AND HEALTH 

foreign countries, like dates and figs, we should be sure 
to wash carefully before using. 

If we buy bread and cake from a baker's cart, as we 
do sometimes in the country, especially in the summer, 
we should know whether or not the bakery is clean. 
It is a great comfort in the hot weather to give up the 
baking for a while ; but how unfortunate to buy food 
made of poor materials and in an uncleanly way. There 
are large bakeries in some cities where the bread is made 
without being touched by the hands, the paper wrapper 
even being put on by machinery. This is a matter for 
study by the Woman's Club. If there are bakery laws, 
they should be enforced. No one has a right to sell 
baked food on which flies have crawled. We all should 
be too intelligent to eat impure and unclean food. 

Cannot a girl help herself and her family by earning 
a little money ? Many mothers and daughters around 
Pleasant Valley have what we call the " egg money." 
In the lesson on eggs we have already talked over some 
points about selling eggs. The Girls' Club one day 
asked if Miss Travers and Miss James would not dis- 
cuss with them the question of earning money in other 
ways. Barbara Oakes said that she wanted to go away 
to school and then to the State College, after she had 
finished at the Pleasant Valley School ; but with their 
large family, she did not know whether she could ask 
her father to help her. The girls had already heard 
of the canning clubs and knew that in this way each 
girl could have a little income. As a result of their 



OTHER FACTS ABOUT FOOD 285 

discussion with their teachers and with their mothers 
and fathers, two or three of the club members decided to 
make bread and some other baked foods for sale. Miss 
James called upon several of the members of the Wo- 
man's Club who might be willing to be relieved of some 
of their baking. Several of the ladies were glad to try 




Courtesy of Miss Katherine Braithwaite. 



Fig. 128. — Raising ducks is a possible occupation. An old 
iron sink is used for a swimming pool. 

this experiment and they have found that the girls can 
make really delicious bread, rolls, cake, cookies, and 
desserts. 

An experiment in making butter for sale. A part of 
Mr. Allen's income comes from his selling his very good 
milk to a creamery. Marjorie said to him one day: 
" Father, you certainly have good cows. How differ- 



286 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



ent they are from those on Mr. Blank's farm ! Miss 
Travers noticed it one day when she was here and we 
were taking her to drive. She said, ' Why does Mr. 




Courtesy of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. 
Fig. 129. — Marjorie Allen and her new work and play. 

Blank have such poor cows ? ' I could not help telling 
her that he has only three cans of milk from fifteen cows, 
and you have four cans from six." 1 

This little book cannot tell you very much about 
dairying, but the U. S. Department of Agriculture will 

1 This is an actual fact in one town. 



OTHER FACTS ABOUT FOOD 287 

send all the pamphlets about cows and butter that you 
need. 

Marjorie astonished her father by asking if he would 
give to herself and her brother Frank one of the fine 
calves, if they would care for it. She was not sure 
that she could now pay for all its feed, but when 
it was older she thought that she could return to 
him what the calf had cost, in butter. Mr. Allen 
talked it over with Mrs. Allen, and finally allowed 
Marjorie and her brother Frank to try the experi- 
ment. The brother and sister read all the pamphlets 
that they could find, studied the question of food 
for the calf, and kept an account of its cost. They 
learned, too about butter making and ways of selling 
butter. The experiment has not ended yet, but in the 
meantime Marjorie is making butter with her mother. 
Do you suppose that some one of you could do 
this, too ? Although they plan always to live in the 
country, Marjorie and her brother are very anxious to 
go to the State College, and they want to help educate 
themselves. 

Pin money from fresh vegetables. A girl who will 
give herself the pleasure of working in a vegetable 
garden in the summer will probably be able to sell 
her delicious fresh vegetables. These can even be 
sent away by parcel post. You can get directions 
from the post office about mailing boxes to be used 
in this way. 



288 FOOD AND HEALTH 



EXERCISES AND PROBLEMS 

1. Study the labels on all the food packages and bottles that 
you have at home and at school. 

2. If you have scales of any kind, measure a few of the food pack- 
ages either at home or at school. 

3. Measure the contents of a few bottles to see if they agree 
with their labels. 

4. Find out the laws of your own state and town in regard to 
pure food. 

5. What are some of the important points to remember in sell- 
ing food ? 

6. Is it good business to sell material of poor quality ? Why 
not? 

7. Is it good business in selling fruit to put the best on the top 
and the poor underneath ? 

8. « Can you think of other ways than those suggested in this 
lesson for a girl to earn a little money at home ? 

REVIEW 

1. What is the use of a thermometer ? 

2. Do you know how to use a Centigrade thermometer ? 

3. What is a calorie ? 

4. What is meant by a 100-calorie portion ? 

5. What are you going to be particular about when you buy 
food? 

6. What is the government doing to help you to have pure food 
and honest weights ? 

7. If some one in your family seems to be under weight, what 
can you suggest ? 



THE ELLEN H. RICHARDS HOUSE 



You will be glad to know that all the townspeople 
in Pleasant Valley were delighted with the year's work 
in home making at the new schoolhouse. Mr. Roberts, 



V i ** 



■M 



hi 



m 



Courtesy of Mr. R.J. Plauten. 

Fig. 130. — The Ellen H. Richards House. 

the president of the Pleasant Valley Bank, was so 
pleased with the results both at school and in the 
homes of the valley that he gave the house that you 

u 289 



2 9 o FOOD AND HEALTH 

see in the picture (Fig. 130), to be used for home- 
making classes by the girls, and for the boys' clubs as 
as well. The house was named for Mrs. Ellen H. 
Richards, the great and good woman of Boston, Mas- 
sachusetts, whose friends are found all over the world, 
and who helped to develop the teaching of home eco- 
nomics everywhere. 

What are some of the facts about food and health 
that a girl may learn useful to herself and her family ? 
This is the question at the beginning of the first chap- 
ter. Do you not think that you can all give an answer 
now ? And would you not like to write a composition 
about it ? Perhaps your teacher will have a gathering 
at the school of all the fathers and mothers. Maybe 
one of you can write a little play or pageant connected 
in some way with household arts for this closing party 
of the school year. 

And where is Pleasant Valley ? Perhaps you asked 
this question when you looked at the picture on one of 
the first pages. Pleasant Valley is your own home 
town ; and, though it really has quite another name, it 
still may be Pleasant Rivers, or Pleasant Hill, or Pleas- 
ant Fields, or Pleasant Plain. Why not ? In this wide 
country of ours there are many forms of natural beauty. 
Even in the dry sections where trees are grown with 
difficulty, there are still the far reaches of the plains 
and the beautiful effects of sky and cloud, sunrise 
and sunset. If our own town is ugly and unhealthy, 
it is not nature's fault, for the beauty and homelikeness 



THE ELLEN H. RICHARDS HOUSE 291 

and the healthfulness of any place depend upon its 
inhabitants. Even the simplest and plainest village or 
countryside has one kind of beauty if it is kept perfectly 
clean. At the same time, it costs but little money in 
many places to plant trees and shrubs and to keep the 
grass green. 

You must see, however, that it is something more 
than beauty in the things about us that we have been 
studying together. You boys and girls in your own 
school are to be the men and women who will make 
the homes and the town the best possible places for 
successful and happy living. Do you realize what it 
means to be citizens of a great commonwealth like this 
of our United States ? Do you understand the word 
" commonwealth " ? It is a good, old word that 
means a land where all the people share their wealth 
and work together for the good of all. We cannot suc- 
ceed in making our country a commonwealth until we 
begin in our home and in our home town. More and 
more must our country stand for democracy for our- 
selves and the whole world. You must bring to the 
problems of the future strong bodies, and clean and 
strong hearts and minds. 



PAGES FROM MARJORIE ALLEN'S NOTEBOOK 

1. Utensils for the school lunch. Polly sent me this answer, 
when I wrote to ask her for a list of utensils that they were using 
at the Big Tree School (see Fig. 6) : 

" With the money we gave and a part of our prize money from 
our school exhibit at the Erie County Fair, we bought the rest 
of our cooking equipment: 12 towels, 2 dish pans, 1 granite kettle 
(8 qt.), I granite saucepan (6 qt.), 1 basin, 1 dipper, 1 measuring 
cup, 2 toasters, 1 strainer or sieve, 2 large spoons, 1 paring knife. 
We bought large granite dishes so that we might cook enough food 
for lunch at noon. Soap, matches, holders, etc., were given by 
some of our Mothers. We also bought a small washboard which 
could be used in the dish pan to wash out the towels after using, 
and each week some one took the towels home to be washed there." 

A friend of Miss James who teaches in the Extension Depart- 
ment of the Ohio State University sent this list : 

1 two-burner oil stove #4 or $8 

1 oven to fit one burner 1.50 

1 dish pan (tin) .10 to .20 

1 drain pan (tin or granite) . .20 

1 large container, 8 or 10 qt. (a kettle or stock pot 

retinned or granite) 60-1.75 

1 kettle; 6 or 8 qt. size (retinned or granite) . . .60 

2 covers to fit kettles 20 

1 colander (tin) 10 

1 tray 10 

1 spatula .35-. 40 

2 tablespoons .10 

2 teaspoons .10 

1 measuring cup (tin or glass) ........ .10 

1 can opener .15 

292 



MARJORIE ALLEN'S NOTEBOOK 293 

1 kitchen fork $.10 

1 large fork .10 

1 bread knife .60 

* 1 egg beater .05 

1 paring knife .10 

1 potato masher .10 

1 soup ladle (half pt.) .25 

1 wooden spoon (stirring) .15 

1 sauce pan (1 qt. size) 30 

Total $9-95 to $15.25 

Small covered cans or jars are useful for holding supplies, as 
flour, sugar, salt, etc. A Mason jar or tin lard pail can be used. 
A pail for water and one for garbage are necessary. All garbage 
should be burned or buried. 

2. An easy way to write measures in our books : 



oz. = ounce 

lb. = pound 

ssp. = saltspoonful 

tsp. = teaspoonful 

tb. = tablespoonful 



cp. = cup 
pt. = pint 
qt. = quart 
gall. = gallon 
pk. = peck 
bu. = bushel 



3. What food does for us. Food builds our bodies, and gives 
us fuel; and so gives us heat and power to work. It also helps 
to make the body run properly — "regulates the body," Miss 
James says. She explained this by saying that one thing that 
water does is to help keep our bodies at an even heat. 

4. What do we mean by foodstuffs ? There are many kinds of 
food materials, but they are all made of a few substances called 
foodstuffs. 



Body Builders 


Fuel Foods 


Body Regulators 


Protein 

Mineral matter or ash 


Protein 

Fat 

Carbohydrates (Starch and sugar) 


Water 
Mineral matter 



294 FOOD AND HEALTH 

Cellulose, or vegetable fiber, is not digested, and does not nourish 
us, but it helps to keep the digestive tract in order. It is a good 
plan to use some bran in cereals and muffins. 

5. Some food materials have one foodstuff only, and others all of 
them. This list helps me to remember the foodstuffs in different 
food materials : 

Foods largely protein : lean meat of all kinds, fish, shellfish, eggs, 
cheese. 

Foods rich in protein but with more of other substances than the 
above : milk, cereals, bread, macaroni, nuts, dried peas, beans, and 
lentils. 

Foods largely fat : butter, cream, olive oil, bacon, lard, oleo- 
margarine, fat from meat or nuts. 

Foods rich in fat but with more of other materials than the 
above : milk, egg yolk, nuts, fat meats. 

Foods largely carbohydrate : sugars, starches, honey, molasses, ' 
sirups, tapioca, potatoes, bananas. 

Foods rich in carbohydrate but with more of other materials 
than the above : bread, cereals, macaroni, milk, sweet fruits, 
carrots, parsnips, corn, dried peas and beans. 

Foods rich in mineral matter : milk, egg yolks, cereals made from 
the whole grain, fruits, green vegetables, dried peas and beans. 

6. Why do we cook, and how ? We cook food sometimes to 
make it look good to eat; to change the flavor; to make it digest 
more readily; to kill yeast, bacteria, and molds. We can cook 
in all these ways : 

Heat direct from coal, charcoal, wood, or gas : 

Toasting : Surfaces of food exposed and turned for browning. 
Broiling : Thin portions of meat or fish exposed and turned for 

searing, browning, and short cooking of the interior. 
Roasting : Thicker cuts of meat exposed and turned frequently 

for searing, browning, and gradual cooking of the interior. 

This is an ancient method. We use it in gas stoves when we 

cook directly under the gas. 



MARJORIE ALLEN'S NOTEBOOK 295 

Heat through some substance : 
Cooking in water : 

Boiling: Cooking in boiling water, temperature, 21 2° F., or 

ioo° C. 
Simmering, stewing, or " coddling." — Cooking in water below 

the boiling temperature, 180 F. up to 210 F. 
Steaming : Cooking in a receptacle into which steam passes, 
21 2° F. — or in a closed receptacle with steam or boiling water 
around the inner vessel as in a double boiler, or a " steamer," 
temperature from 200 F. to 210 F. 
Cooking in fat : 

Deep fat frying, temperature 35o°-400° F. 
Cooking by heated surfaces : 

Pan broiling : Cooking of chops or steaks in a heated pan, with- 
out additional fat. 
Sauter : To cook in a heated pan with a small amount of fat, 
enough merely to prevent the food from sticking to the pan and 
to hasten the browning process. " Baking " cakes on a 
griddle is one form of this. 
Baking : Cooking in a heated oven, temperature from 300 F. 
to 450 F. or higher for rapid browning. Meat and poultry 
cooked in an oven are baked and not roasted, although we use 
the word " roast " for this method. 
Braising : Cooking meat in a heated oven in a closed vessel, with 
a supply of water to keep down the temperature. This 
might be called an " oven stew." 
These methods are sometimes combined in one process. In a 
brown stew, the meat is first cooked in a pan with a little fat to 
brown it, and to sear the outside for keeping in the juices, before 
the stewing begins. A " pot roast " is an old-fashioned method of 
cooking a solid piece of meat with a little water in a pot on top of 
the stove. The water simmers out, and the meat is browned. 

7. Something about baking. Miss James says that the only 
way to test an oven is by a thermometer with a bulb that is really 



296 



FOOD AND HEALTH 



in the oven. Mother says that she will have a hole bored into the 
oven when I have saved enough money to buy a long " chemical " 
thermometer that can be run in through the hole. The ther- 
mometers on oven doors are a help, but they are not exact. Miss 
James has a friend at Teachers College, Columbia University, 
New York, who sent her a pamphlet, " Oven Temperature," by 
Professor May B. Van Arsdale. Here is one table that she gives. 
The arrow means high temperature at first and then low. 



Slow 


Moderate 


Hot or "Quick " 


Very Hot 


250-350 F. 


350-400 F. 


400-460 F. 


450-550 F. 


Custards 
Meringues 

Sponge 
Angel 


Cake 

Food 

Bread 

Gingerbread 
Plain Cake 
Cookies 


Baking 
Rolls 


Powder Biscuit 



Popovers 



Pastry 



While I am waiting for my thermometer, I must do my best by 
browning pieces of white paper, and " learning by experience." 

8. Time-table for canning. Mrs. Jane S. McKimmon of Raleigh, 
N.C., sent us this time-table to help our Canning Club. We 
sent to Mr. O. H. Benson, States Relation Service, U. S. Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., for full directions about 
our Canning Club. 



Tomatoes . 
String beans . 
Sweet potatoes 



Blanch 



5 minutes 
Cook I 
done 



Liquor 



No water 
Brine 
Pack dry 



No. Can 



Exhaust 
Minutes 



Process or 
Boil 



22 minutes 
I hour 
3 hours 



MARJORIE ALLEN'S NOTEBOOK 



297 



Baby beets . 

Apples . . 
Berries . . 
Berries . . 
Peaches . . 
Pears . . . 
Cherries (sweet) 

Cherries (sour) . 



Blanch 



Cook f 

done 
1 minute 



1 minute 
1 minute 



Liquor 



Brine 

#1 sirup 
#3 sirup 
#3 sirup 
#3 sirup 
#3 sirup 
#3 sirup 

#4 sirup 



No. Can 


Exhaust 
Minutes 


3 


5 


3 


2 


3 


3 


10 


4 


3 


3 


3 


3 


qt. glass 


2 


jar 




qt. glass 


2 


jar 





Process or 
Boil 



2 hours 

8 minutes 
10 minutes 
32 minutes 
15 minutes 
25 minutes 
30 minutes 

30 minutes 



(A heavy pack of peaches such as those that are layered in glass 
jars will require a 50 sirup.) 

The following vegetables should be processed (boiled) the same 
length of time on each of three successive days. 



Soup mixture 
Corn . . 

Garden peas 
Okra . . 



Blanch 



On cob 2 
minutes 
1 to 4 min. 
3 minutes 



Liquor 



Salt and sugar 
Water, salt and 

sugar 
Water 
Brine 



No. Can 



Exhaust 
Minutes 



Process or Boil 

on Each of Three 

Successive Days 



1 nour 

1 hr. 15 min. 
45 min. to 1 hr. 
1 hour 



Brine is made of 2§ ounces (J cup) of salt to 1 gallon of water. 
To make sirups recommended, boil sugar and water together 
in proportions given below : 

Sirup #1, use 14 ounces to 1 gallon water. 
Sirup #2, use 1 pound 14 ounces to 1 gallon water. 
Sirup #3, use 3 pounds 9 ounces to 1 gallon water. 
Sirup #4, use 5 pounds 8 ounces to 1 gallon water. 
Sirup #5, use 6 pounds 13 ounces to 1 gallon water. 
1 pint sugar is one pound. A pound is 16 ounces. 



298 FOOD AND HEALTH 

9. Canning meat at home. Bulletin No. 101, Vol. V, New York 
State College, Cornell University Talk about Canning Meat at 
Home. 

Sear the meat or chicken in a hot oven, in hot fat, or in boiling 
water, and steam it or simmer it until it can be torn apart. Pack 
the meat into the jars, fill the space with stock, and add one-half 
teaspoonful of salt to each pint of meat. Sterilize the meat for 
three hours, in a boiler (page ioo). Unless the meat is first 
browned, it does not have so good a flavor. 

10. Starch experiments we like to try. Starch turns a pretty 
blue color in iodine and water. 

1. Grate a piece of potato into a small amount of water, and 
strain out the pulp. The starch settles from the water in a few 
minutes. Pour oflF the water, and add a drop of diluted iodine to 
the remaining starch. Dilute this mixture and with a dropper 
tube place a drop upon a slide. We could see the potato starch 
granules through our microscope. 

2. Drop a teaspoonful of dry starch into boiling water. 

3. Mix a teaspoonful of starch with a small quantity of cold 
water, and stir this into boiling water. 

4. Mix a teaspoonful of starch with J cup of cold water, and 
bring the water to the boiling point, stirring the mixture as it heats. 

Why are 3 and 4 similar in result, and different from 2 ? 

5. Test all these with a drop of iodine. 

11. Experiments with baking powder. These are the experiments 
we tried when the Woman's Club met at the school. We liked 
No. 3 the best of all. 

1. Dissolve half a teaspoonful of baking powder in two table- 
spoonfuls of water and heat in a test tube, or saucepan, over a 
flame ; notice the effervescence when the bubbling is at its height, 
and hold a lighted match in the mouth of the tube. This is a simple 
test for carbon dioxide. 

2. Dissolve 2 teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar in \ cup water in a 
glass. 



MARJORIE ALLEN'S NOTEBOOK 299 

Dissolve 1 teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda in \ cup water 
in a glass. 

Taste both of these. 

Test both with litmus paper, noting the change of color. There 
are several vegetable coloring matters that change color in this 
way, in the presence of an acid or an alkaline substance. 

Turn the two solutions together, and test with both blue and 
pink litmus paper, after the solution has stood for several minutes. 
What results ? 

Taste this mixed solution to see if you can detect any difference. 

To prove that there is a substance still left, evaporate the 
water. 

3. A pretty form of this experiment is to use, instead of litmus, 
the water in which red cabbage has previously been boiled, and 
which, therefore, contains some of the coloring matter of the 
cabbage. The changes in color are very striking, and prove con- 
clusively that neither the cream of tartar nor the soda remains 
such. 

12. Where does that carbon in the plants come from ? When 
I asked Father how much he paid for the carbon for his plants 
he said, "Not one penny!" Miss James says that we cannot 
understand the whole true fairy story until we study biology and 
botany. It is something like this. Plants breathe through their 
leaves, and they take in carbon dioxide gas which is in the air. 
Then in some way the carbon is used in making starch and sugar 
in the plant. We eat the sugar and starch and so have the carbon. 
When we study more about physiology and nutrition, we shall 
understand how it is that we breathe out carbon dioxide gas! 
And as to the carbon in our coal, it is the carbon that was stored 
up in plants that lived so many thousand years ago, that we 
cannot count the years. This we learn about in geology. 

13. What does heat do to the foodstuffs ? 

Protein. There are several forms of protein, with differences 
that we can understand only after a thorough study of chemistry. 



300 FOOD AND HEALTH 

# 

The most important proteins in meat, fish, eggs, milk, old beans, 
and peas coagulate, or become slightly harder or firmer at a tem- 
perature below the boiling point of water. There is no marked 
chemical change; that is, the protein is not changed to another 
substance. 

Fats. Solid fats are liquefied by heat, and freed from the 
tissue that contains them in animal fats like suet. 

When a fat begins to smoke with heat, a chemical change is 
taking place. If intense heat is continued, all the hydrogen and 
oxygen are driven off" and pure carbon remains. When the fat is 
" brown," giving the flavor we like, a part of the oxygen and hydro- 
gen have been driven off. The " boiling " of fat in a kettle is 
ordinarily due to the boiling of the water contained in the fat. 

Starch. Starch occurs in the form of granules. See Fig. 56. 
In boiling water, the granule expands and finally bursts, and frees 
the content, the pure starch, and the whole mass thickens. 

Boiled with an acid the starch is changed to dextrin, a substance 
resembling a gum, and the mixture becomes thin ; and this process 
continued changes the dextrin to dextrose. 

With intense " dry " heat, as in toasting, the granule expands 
and opens, and the contents change to dextrin. Continued heat 
reduces the starch to pure carbon. The brown color and pleasant 
flavor in toast are a stage on the road to carbon. 

Sugar. Sugar first melts with heat, then begins to decompose, 
giving off water. This is also a stage on the road to pure carbon. 
Caramel, a familiar flavor, is sugar in the brown stage, with the 
water partly driven off. 

The art in applying intense heat to fat, starch, and sugar is to 
know the stopping point, — to reach the " brown taste " and stop 
short of the " burnt taste." 

Mineral matter. The " ash " remains for the most part un- 
changed by heat, but may be lost in the water in which vegetables 
and meat are cooked if the water is thrown away. 

Vegetable fiber is softened by heat and moisture, and the pro- 



MARJORIE ALLEN'S NOTEBOOK 301 

tein, starch, fat, and sugar are freed, making them available for our 
digestion and nutrition. 

Meat fiber softens at a low temperature, that is, below the boiling 
point of water, with moisture; continued intense heat shrinks 
and hardens it. A tender steak fried with fat in a hot pan will 
soon resemble sole leather. 

14. Suggestions for the basket lunch. 

I copied this from Farmers' Bulletin No. 712, by Miss Caroline 
L. Hunt : 

Paper napkins or paper towels of much the same size are very 
useful for packing lunches, and, like paraffin and parchment paper, 
may now be bought at a low price. 

Napkins can be made also out of cotton crepe at a cost of a very 
few cents each. The crepe may be bought by the yard, and should 
be cut into squares and fringed. Such napkins do not need to be 
ironed. 

In packing the lunch basket put at the bottom the things least 
likely to crush, and wrap the sandwiches, etc., into neat parcels, 
not all in one. Paper cups; jelly tumblers with covers, which can 
now be bought in several sizes ; bottles with screw tops, such as 
those in which candy and some other foods are sold ; and small 
jars such as those in which some goods are sold by druggists, can 
all be used for packing jellies, jams, and honey, and other foods. 

A Few Bills of Fare for the Basket Lunch 

1. Sandwiches with sliced tender meat for filling; baked apple, 
cookies, or a few lumps of sugar. 

2. Slices of meat loaf or bean loaf ; bread and butter sandwiches ; 
stewed fruit; small frosted cake. 

3. Crisp rolls, hollowed out and filled with chopped meat or 
fish, moistened and seasoned, or mixed with salad dressing ; orange, 
apple, a mixture of sliced fruits, or berries ; cake. 

4. Lettuce or celery sandwiches ; cup custard ; jelly sandwiches. 



3 o2 FOOD AND HEALTH 

5. Cottage cheese and chopped green-pepper sandwiches or a 
pot of cream cheese with bread-and-butter sandwiches ; peanut 
sandwiches; fruit; cake. 

6. Hard-boiled eggs; crisp baking-powder biscuits; celery or 
radishes ; brown-sugar or maple-sugar sandwiches. 

7. Bottle of milk; thin corn bread and butter; dates; apple. 

8. Raisin or nut bread with butter; cheese; orange; maple 
sugar. 

9. Baked bean and lettuce sandwiches; apple sauce; sweet 
chocolate. 

15. Preparation of Orange Pectin. Miss Agnes Harris, Assistant 
State Agent of Florida, in charge of Home Extension work, sent 
Miss James a box of jellies and jams that her girls had made, and 
a pamphlet of recipes. 

Use J lb. white orange peel; J pt. water; 2 tablespoons lemon 
juice. Cut or scrape the yellow from the peel of the orange. Pass 
the remaining white portion through a food chopper ; then weigh 
it. For each | lb. of the peel, add \ pt. of water. Add the lemon 
juice, mix thoroughly, and allow to stand 1 hr. Add ii pts. of 
water. Let stand 1 hr., boil 10 minutes, and. then let stand until 
cold. Place in a flannel jelly bag, press to remove the juice, and 
drain juice through a clean, flannel jelly bag. It may be prepared, 
poured into jars while hot, sealed, and kept for later use. 

For strawberry and orange pectin jelly use \ pt. orange pectin ; 
\ lb. sugar; \ pt. strawberry juice. Mother and I are experi- 
menting with pineapple, cherry juice, and other fruits. 

The' alcohol pectin test. Pour a teaspoonful of fruit juice, when 
cooled, into a clean cup, and pour in a teaspoonful of grain alcohol 
of 95% strength. Mix by gently shaking; then pour into a spoon. 
For jelly, if the pectin is in a solid lump, it is safe to add equal 
parts of sugar and juice ; if it has not gathered in one lump, use 
less sugar, — say £ sugar to 1 of juice. 



INDEX 



Air as cleanser, 137. 
Alcohol : 

from bread, 49. 

result of fermentation, 97. 
Allen family : 

dining table on piazza, 72. 

"sugaring off," 132. 
American custom for use of silver 

dishes, 80. 
Apparatus : 

for cooking, 246-255. 

for preserving fruits, 97. 
Apple : 

baked, in, 113. 

calorie portion, 275. 

composition of, no. 

cooking, 112. 

drying, 105. 

for fruit beverage, 18. 
Apple butter, 101. 
Apple jelly, 102. 
Apple sauce, 113. 
Apple scallop, 115. 
Apricots, 114. 
Ash: 

in celery, 225. 

in corn, 225. 

in milk, 35. 

in parsley, 225. 

in potato, 118. 

product of combustion, 7. 
Atkinson cooker, 165, 250. 

Bacilli, 95. 
Bacteria : 

harmful in water, 22. 

help purify water, 22. 



and 



Bacteria (Continued) 

how to fight, 96. 

in meat, 210. 

in milk, 36. 

types of, 95. 
Bacteria cells, 95. 
Baking : 

bread, 49, 53. 

fruit, 112. 

potato, 121. 

vegetables, 228. 
Baking powder : 

biscuit, 181. 

griddle cakes, 127. 

study of, 184. 
Baked-bean loaf, 85. 
Baked beans, 230. 
Baked Indian pudding, 240. 
Baked peas, 231. 
Baked potatoes, 123. 
Baker's bread, 46. 
Banana, 20. 
Barberries, 113. 
Beef: 

calorie portions, 275. 

corning, 214. 

creamed dried, 151. 

cuts of, 208. 

"frizzled" with egg, 151. 

how to cook corned, 215. 

prime ribs of, 210. 

ways of cooking, 212, 214, 216. 

See Steak and Roasts. 
Bees, 132. 
Berries : 

dried, 114. 

for table, in. 



303 



304 



INDEX 



Berries (Continued) 

value in diet, 109. 
Beverages : 

for school lunch, 18-25. 

fruit, 18. 

hot, 26-3 1 . 
Big Tree School Luncheon Club, 15. 
Biscuit : 

baking powder, 181. 

digestibility of, 127. 

dough for, 51. 

soda and sour milk, 181. 
Blueberry jelly, 103. 
Body-building material : 

in bread, 46. 

in meat, 205. 

in milk, 35. 

protein as, 35. 
Boiled salad dressing, 88. 
Boiling : 

meat, 212, 215. 

potatoes, 121. 

vegetables, 228. 
Borax, 135. 

Boston brown bread, 86. 
Bread : 

baker's, 46. 

Boston brown, 86. 

calorie portions, 275. 

contest, 40, 42, 47. 

dough for rolls, 51. 

flour for, 48. 

machine, 54. 

making, 48—55. 

points of good, 43. 

relation of price to food value of, 
278. 

staple food, 40-48. 

uses for, 53. • 

what it contains, 45. 

what to put in, 51. 

why a cheap food, 46. 

why it will " rise," 49. 

why put yeast in, 49. 
Bread score, 43. 



Breads, quick, 177-185. 
Breakfast : 

cereals, 156-165. 

coffee for, 152. 

for business man, 147. 

for farmers, 147. 

how easy to get, 151. 

how served at the Aliens', 75. 

in winter, 147. 

meat dishes for, 150-15 1. 

muffins for, 181. 

plans for, 147. 

reason for a light, 148. 
Breakfast dishes, 146-156. 
Broiling chops and steaks, 216. 
Brown Betty, 115. 
Brown bread, 45. 
Brown Elizabeth, 115. 
Butcher's cart, 209. 
Butter : 

calorie portions, 275. 

diseases carried in, 36. 

in bread, 51. 

making for sale, 285. 

using, 277. 
Butterine, 39, 51. 
Butter sauce, 65. 
Buying and selling foods, 280-287. 

Cabbage, 229. 
Cake, 79, 129-133. 
Calorie, what it is, 273. 
Calorie portions : 

in foods, 275. 

of vegetables, 223. 

study of, 268-279. 

100-calorie portions, 275-279. 
Calorimeter, 272. 
Canned fruits, 18, 114. 
Canned oysters, creamed, 64. 
Canneries, 94, 106. 
Canning: 

fruit and vegetables, 92-108. 

methods of, 100. 

reasons for, 92-94. 



INDEX 



305 



Canning apparatus : 

steam cooker, 98. 

sterilizer, 99. 
Canning clubs, 4, 93, 94, 106. 
Carbohydrate : 

in celery, 225. 

in corn, 225. 

in milk, 35. 

in parsley, 225. 

in potato, 118. 
Carbon, 119. 
Carbon dioxide, 49. 
Celery : 

composition of, 225. 

stewed, 229. 
Cellar: 

care of food in, 262. 

care of vegetables in, 224. 
Cells of yeast, 49. 
Centigrade, 270. 
Cereals : 

cooking, 159. 

corn, 161. 

double boiler for, 158. 

eating, 164. 

effect of cooking on, 158. 

fireless cooker for, 165. 

ready cooked, 158. 

rye, 162. 

time for cooking, 160. 

uses of cold, 160. 

why valuable, 157. 
Cheese : 

for sandwiches, 60. 

recipe for, 33. 
Cheese toast, 82. 

Chemicals used for preserving, 97. 
Cherries : 

drying, 105. 

in fruit-ade, 20. 
Chicken, canned, 298. 
Chili sauce, 103. 
China, 76. 
Chocolate, 27. 
Chops, broiling, 216. 



Clam chowder, 65. 

Clean cup, 24. 

Cleanliness, importance of, 134. 

Clean milk, 36, 39. 

Clearing off table, 265. 

Clearing up after meals, 133-145, 

Coal range, 248. 

Cocoa, 26-31. 

Coffee : 

boiled, 154. 

cereal, 152. 

drip, 155- 

effect on nerves, 26. 

for breakfast, 152. 

percolator, 154. 

pots for, 153. 
Common drinking glass, 24. 
"Commonwealth," 291. 
Compost heap, 266. 
Compressed yeast, 50. 
Cooked fruit, in. 
Cooker : 

Atkinson, 165, 250. 

fireless, 165, 255. 

homemade, 250. 

steam, 25. 
Cookies, 131. 
Cooking : 

apparatus, 246-256. 

at school, 11. 

by kerosene, 249. 

cereals, 159. 

dainty, pretty work, 27. 

effect on fruit, in. 

effect on potato, 120. 

fish, 66. 

fresh meat, 216. 

meat, 214. 

neatly dressed for, 257. 

packing box equipment for, 12. 

planning for, 29. 

rice, 162. 

selecting meat for, 211. 

to have heat for, 247. 

utensils for, 192. 



3° 6 



INDEX 



Cooking (Continued) 

vegetables, 227-234. 
Corn: 

canning, 107. 

composition of, 225. 

drying, 105. 
Corn beef: 

hash, 150. 

how to cook, 215. 
Corning beef, 214. 
Corn meal : 

for bread, 44, 161. 

in griddle cakes, 127. 

mush, 162. 
Corn products, 161. 
Corn starch : 

fruit sponge with, 236. 

pudding, 238. 
Correct position for holding knife 

fork, 79. 
Cow, 36-38. 
Cranberry sauce, 113. 
"Crash" for table cover, 74. 
Cream : 

calorie portions, 275. 

for children, 277. 

for hot drinks, 26. 

removed by dairy separator, 35. 

using, 276. 

with fruit, in. 
Creamed codfish, 63. 
Creamed dried beef, 151. 
Creamed potato, 125. 
Creaming butter and sugar, 131. 
Cream of tartar, 19, 184. 
Cream of tomato soup, 233. 
Creamy rice pudding, 239. 
Cupboard, 13. 
Cups : 

for drinking, 24. 

for measuring, 27. 
Curd of milk, 35. 
Currant jelly, 19, 103. 
Currant juice for beverages, 18. 
Currants, in bread, 51. 



and 



Custard ice cream, 245. 

Dates, 115, 284. 
Desserts : 

dishes for, 234-246. 

fruit, 115, 236. 

milk, 238. 

pies as, 241-243. 
Diet : 

griddle cakes in, 127. 

milk in, 34. 

value of fruit in, 108. 
Dining table, 72. 
Dinner : 

at night, 148. 

home, 199-267. 

how different from other meals, 198- 
204. 

plans for, 199, 203. 
Directions for work in canning and pre- 
serving, 98. 
Diseases, carried in milk, 36. 
Dishcloth, 137. 
Dishes : 

placed in rack, 139. 

rinsing, 139. 

use of, 79. 

washing, 133-145. 
Dishwasher, 142. 
Doilies for table, 73. 
Double boiler, 13, 158. 
Drainage, 143. 
Dried food, 105. 
Dried fruit, 114. 
Dried vegetable soup, 232. 
Drinking cups, 24. 
Drinking fountain, 25. 
Dry yeast, 50, 51. 

Earning money, 284. 
Eating, good manners in, 80. 
Eating and work, 148. 
Eggs: 

baked, 175. 

beating, 172. 



INDEX 



307 



Eggs {Continued) 

boiled, 174. 

calorie portions, 275. 

compared with milk, 36. 

cost of, 169. 

digestibility of, 60, 171. 

eating raw, 173. 

effect of cooking on, 172. 

food value of, 171. 

for cake, 130. 

for market, 167. 

for sandwich, 60. 

hard-cooked, 60, 171. 

jellied or coddled, 174. 

poached, 174. 

preserving for winter use, 175. 

selling fresh, 168. 

storing, 169. 

taking to market, 170. 

whipped, 173. 
Ellen H. Richards house, 79, 289. 
Energy : 

from foods, 278. 

from milk, 34, 46. 

from potato, 119. 
English custom for use of silver, 80. 
Evaporation, 263. 
Exhibit of quick bread, 179, 183. 
Experiments with meat, 212. 

Fahrenheit, 270, 271. 

Family, how much food to give, 201, 

268-279. 
Fat: 

in bread, 51. 

in chocolate, 27. 

in meat, 205. 

in potato, 118. 

potato warmed over in, 125. 
Fermentation, 97. 
Figs, 114, 115, 284. 

Fireless cooker, 14, 28, 136, 165, 252-254. 
Fish: 

baked, 63. 

buying, 66. 



Fish (Continued) 

chowder, 65. 

cooking, 66. 

for dinner, 199. 

hash, 156. 

scalloped, 63. 

value as food, 66. 
Floor, kitchen, 189. 
Flour : 

in griddle cakes, 127. 

kinds of, 48. 
Flowers for table, jj. 
Foamy sauce, 116. 
Food: 

buying and selling, 280-287. 

care of, 256-267. 

cheap brands of, 282. 

dry, 94. 

facts about, 5-8. 

for body building, 6. 

for work, 6. 

how to keep clean, 256. 

ice for keeping, 259. 

keeping dry, 264. 

keeping in the cellar, 262. 

meat as, 204-219. 

milk as, 36. 

potatoes as, 1 17-126. 

reasons for studying about, 3. 

requirements for day, 276. 

table of 100-calorie portions of, 276, 
279. 

to serve to company, 79. 

washing of, 258. 

window shelf for, 263. 

white bread as, 44. 

why, spoils, 94. 
Foodstuffs : 

in bread, 45. 

in cake, 129. 

potatoes as, 117. 

vegetables as, 226. 
Food value : 

of cake, 129. 

of chocolate, 27. 



3 o8 



INDEX 



Food value (Continued) 

of cocoa, 27. 

of fish, 66. 

of milk, 46. 

of potatoes, 46, 1 17-126. 

of white bread, 44. 
Formal luncheon, use of silver, 80. 
Fowl: 

cooked in Atkinson cooker, 251. 

principles of cooking, 214. 
French custom for use of silver, 80. 
Fresh vegetables, 219-234. 
Frizzled beef with egg, 151. 
Fruit : 

baking, in. 

canning, 92-106. 

for dessert, 115. 

for jam, 101. 

for jelly, 102. 

preparing for preserving and canning, 

99; 

stewing, 112. 

using canned, 114. 

value of, 108-111. 

with cornstarch mold, 239. 

with squares of pie crust, 242. 
Fruit acids, no. 
Fruit-ade, 20. 
Fruit butter, 101. 
Fruit juice, 18, 20, in. 
Fruit scallops, 115. 
Fruit sponge, 236. 
Fruit tapioca, 116. 

Garbage, care of, 266. 
Garden making, 219-221. 
Gas, from yeast, 49. 
Gastric juice, 127. 
Gelatin in meat, 205. 
Gelatin mold, 236. 
Germs, in milk, 36. 
Gluten, in bread, 45. 
Good bread flour, 48. 
Good manners, 79-81. 
Grains, see Cereals. 



Green corn, composition of, 225. 
Griddle cakes : 

digestibility of, 126. 

for supper and other meals, 126- 

133- 
to make digestible, 127. 
with sour milk, 128. 
Guests, how to honor, 78. 

Ham, boiled, 215. 
Hard sauce, 115. 
Hash, corned-beef, 150. 
Hashed brown potatoes, 125. 
Hasty pudding, 150. 
Health: 

clean rmlk for, 36. 

effect of meat on, 205. 

fruit for, in. 
Heat: 

"conductors" of, 250. 

effect on potato, 120. 

for cooking, 247. 

"nonconductors" of, 250. 
Heat unit, 273. 
Homemade ice box, 259. 
Honest measures and weights, 281. 
Honey, 132. 
Hot drinks, 26-31. 
Hot water, 135-139. 
Household measures, 28. 

Ice: 

caution about using, 24. 

for keeping food, 259. 

putting in, 260. 
Ice cream custard, 244. 
Impure water, 22. 
Indian corn, 161. 
Indian meal mush, 162. 
Indian pudding, 251. 
Iron : 

in fruit, 20. 

in potato, 120. 

in vegetables, 226. 



INDEX 



309 



Jam, 101, 243. 

Japanese toweling for table, 73. 

Jars for canning, 96, 99. 

Jelly: 

apple, 102. 

barberry, 114. 

blueberry, 103. 

cranberry, 113. 

currant, 103. 

lemon, 237. 
Johnny cake, 178. 
Junket, 32, 33. 

Kerosene, cooking by, 136, 249 
Kitchen : 

arrangement of, 191. 

clean, 189. 

lesson about, 186-196. 

Mrs. Allen's, 187. 

place for dining-room table in the, 
72. 

saving steps in, 190. 

to have hot water in, 192. 
Kitchen cabinet, 192. 
Kitchen floor, 189. 
Kitchen sink, 189. 
Kitchen walls, 189. 
Knife, use of, 79, 80. 

Lamb, cuts of, 209. 

Lemon jelly, 237. 

Lemon juice for fruit beverages, 18. 

Lettuce : 

calorie portions of, 275. 

for salad, 87. 
Lime, 7, 35. 
Luncheon : 

at school, 9—67. 

definition of, 56. 

list of foods for, 57. 

nuts for, 60. 

picnic, 61. 

sandwiches for, 58. 
Luncheon club, 10, 15, 24, 40, 61, 65. 



Magnesia, in fruit, no. 
Manners at table, 79, 
Maple sugar, 132. 

Marjorie Allen, 4, 9, 18, 19, 36, 54, 
70, 71, 86, 201, 219, 257, 268, 274. 
Marketing eggs, 170. 
Meal: 

clearing up after, 134. 

definition of, 56. 

effect of season of year on, 149. 
Measures : 

convenient, 28. 

honest, 281. 

liquid for dry, 282. 
Measuring, spoonfuls in, 29* 
Meat: 

as food, 204-219. 

canned, 298. 

cooking, 214, 216. 

danger from, 210. 

effect on health, 205, 206. 

extractives from, 214. 

for sandwiches, 58, 60. 

old-fashioned, soup, 218. 

roasted, 217. 

salted, corned, and smoked, 214. 

scalloped, 83. 

selecting, 211. 
Menu, 147, 199. 
Milk: 

composition of, 35. 

for hot drinks, 36. 

for school lunch, 32. 

how to keep, 38. 

renneted, 32. 

value of, as food, 32-39, 46. 

ioo-calorie portions of, 277. 
Milk desserts, 238. 
Milk sherbet, 246. 
Mineral matter : 

for body building, 7. 

in bread, 45. 

in food, 7. 

in fruit, 20, no, 

in meat, 205, 



3io 



INDEX 



Mineral matter (Continued) 

in milk, 35. 

in potato, 118. 
Miss Fields, 168. 
Miss Travers : 

about bread, 46. 

about buying and selling foods, 280. 

about canning food, 106. 

about earning money, 284. 

about fruit, 108. 

about griddle cakes, 126. 

about pies, 241. 

about 100-calorie portions, 275. 

at quick bread exhibit, 183. 
Molasses, 19, 126. 
Mold, 94-96. 
Muffins, 180. 
Mutton, cuts of, 209. 

Naphtha soap, 137. 
Napkin, 73, 74. 
Nitrogen, 35, 36. 
Nuts: 

in bread, 51. 

for luncheon, 60. 

with dried fruit, 114. 

Oatmeal : 

calorie portions, 275. 

cooking, 158, 159, 165. 

in griddlecakes, 127. 
Old-fashioned meat soup, 218. 
Old-fashioned Rhode Island johnnycake, 

178. 
One-egg cake, 130. 
Oysters, 64. 

Parsnip, 225. 

Patterns, for dishes, 76, jy. 
Peaches, in, 114, 115. 
Pears, 113. 
Peas, 107, 231. 
Phosphorus, 66, no, 119. 
Pickling, 103. 
Picnic luncheon, 61. 



Pie, 241-243. 

Pitcher, 13, 77. 

Planting garden, 220. 

Plants, 119, 221. 

Plates, 74, 140. 

Pleasant Valley, 3, 10, 25, 40, 55, 62, 70, 

94, 109, 132, 290. 
Plums, 114. 
Popovers, 179. 
Pork, 206, 211. 
Potash, no, 119. 
Potato: 

best way to cook, 121. 

boiled, 122. 

calorie portions, 275. 

creamed, 125. 

food value of, 1 17-126. 

hashed brown, 125. 

mashed, 123. 

salad, 87. 

scalloped, 124. 

soup, 232. 
Pots, for coffee, 153. 
Pot roast, 202, 217. 
Pot stew, 217. 
Poultry, 166. 
Ptomaine poison, 210. 
Public drinking cups, 24. 
Pudding : 

baked Indian, 240. 

corn starch, 238. 

creamy rice, 239. 

suet, 240. 
Pump, with fountain attached, 25. 

Quick bread : 

exhibit of, 179. 

experiments about making, 184. 

how to make and serve, 177-185. 

making light, 183. 
"Quick lunch," 173. 

Rack, for dishes, 139. 
Rain barrel for water, 194. 
Ready cooked cereals, 158. 



INDEX 



3ii 



Refrigerator : 

care of, 262. 

circulation in, 261. 

Mrs. Allen's, 260. 

well-built, 261. 
Renneted milk, 32. 
Rice: 

boiled, 164. 

cooking, 162. 

for scalloped dish, 84. 

in griddlecakes, 127. 

polished, 163. 

section of kernel, 163. 

varieties of, 163. 

where grown, 162. 
Roast beef gravy, 217. 
Rolls, 51. 
Round steak, 217. 
Running water, 193. 
Rye meal, 45, 162. 

Salad : 

dressing, 87. 

for supper, 87-90. 

potato, 87. 

tomato jelly, 89. 
Salmon, creamed, 64. 
Sandwich, materials for, 58. 
Sanitation, meaning of, 134. 
Saving steps in kitchen, 190. 
Scalloped dishes, 84, 124. 
School kitchen, 27. 
Selling foods, 280-287. 
Selling fresh eggs, 168. 
Septic tank, 143. 
Sherbet, 246. 
Silver, use of, 79. 
Sink, 189, 190. 
Skimmed milk, 38. 
Soap, 136, 137. 
Soda : 

in griddlecakes, 127. 

to make food light, 184. 
Soda biscuit, 181. 
Soft honey cake, 133. 



Soft soap, 135. 
Soup : 

cream of tomato, 233. 

dried vegetables, 232. 

old-fashioned meat, 218. 

pbtato, 232. 

tomato, 202. 

vegetable, 231. 
Sour milk, 33, 39, 127. 
Sour milk griddlecakes, 127. 
Spices, for cake, 131. 
Spoons, for measuring, 29. 

for soup, 80. 

placing on table, 74. 
Squash, canning, 107. 
Starch : 

and sugar, 118. 

cooked, 120. 

in bread, 45. 

in potato, 117. 

raw, 121. 
Steak : 

broiling, 216. 

compared with milk, 37, 171, 
Steam cooker, 255. 
Steam pump, 195. 
Sterilizer, 99. 
"Succotash," 105. 
Sugar: 

for fruit beverage, 18. 

for yeast cells, 51. 

from the farm, 132. 

honey in place of, 132. 

in bread, 51. 
"Sugaring off," 132. 
Supper: 

dishes for, 82-92. 

meat served for, 83. 

preparing, 69-82. 

salad for, 87-92. 
Sweet cakes, 126, 133. 

Table : 

clearing off, 75, 135, 265. 
cover for, 70-73. 



312 



INDEX 



Table (Continued) 

flowers for, 78. 

for cooking, 27. 

for lunch club, 10. 

how to help at, 75. 

laying, 71-74, 78. 
Table manners, 79. 
Tank in attic, 195. 
Tannic acid, 91. 
Tea: 

composition of, 91. 

effect on nerves, 26. 

how to make, 90-92. 

pots for, 91. 
Temperature, how measured, 269. 
Testing jars, 100. 
Thanksgiving dinner, 200. 
"Theine," 91. 
Thermometer : 

Centigrade, 269. 

Fahrenheit, 270. 

for oven, 183. 
Toast, 82. 
Tomatoes : 

eating raw, 227. 

for catsup, 104. 

salad, 89. 

soup, 202, 233. 

with meat dish, 83. 
Tuberculosis, from public drinking cups, 
24. 

Vanilla, 32, 283. 
Vegetables : 

calorie portions of, 223. 

canning, 92-108. 

eating raw, 227. 

effect of cooking on, 227. 

foodstuffs, 226. 

for salad, 87. 

how best to cook, 227. 

selling and shipping, 287, 288. 

soup, 231. 

steaming, 228. 

stewing, 228. 



Vegetables (Continued) 
storing, 224. 
time-table for cooking, 228. 

Warmed-over dish for winter supper, 86. 
Washing dishes, directions for, 134-142. 
Washing off food, 258. 
Waste water, disposal of, 142. 
Water : 

bacteria in, 22. 

boiling, 25. 

distilling, 25. 

for beverages, 18. 

for body, 7. 

function in health of body, 21. 

home supply, 23. 

how nature purifies, 22. 

lime in, 25. 

on the farm, 193. 

plenty of hot, 135. 

soft and hard, 25, 135. 

supply in kitchen, 192. 

tank for, in alley, 195. 

to soften, 135. 

when improved by boiling, 25. 
Well, how to protect, 20-23. 
Wheat, 45, 46. 
Wheat flour, 48, 49. 
Whey, 35. 

Whipped cream salad dressing, 90. 
White bread, 44, 52. 
Whole milk, 35. 
Windmill, 195. 
Window shelf, 263. 
Work for the year, 8. 

Yeast : 

cause of spoiling foods, 95. 

causes working of canned fruit, 94. 

cells, 95. 

effect of sugar on, 97. 

for bread, 49. 

source of, 50. 

wild cells, 51. 

why put in bread, 49. 



Printed in the United States of America. 



